inanimate objects, it is frequently used in an impersonal context when someone's identity is unknown or established on a provisional basis, e.g. "Who is it?" or "With this new haircut, no one knows it is me." It is also used for infants of unspecified gender but may be considered dehumanizing and is therefore more likely in a clinical context. Otherwise, in more personal contexts, the use of it to refer to a person might indicate antipathy or other negative emotions. It can also be used for non-human animals of unspecified sex, though they is common for pets and other domesticated animals of unspecified sex, especially when referred to by a proper name (e.g. Rags, Snuggles). Normally, birds and mammals with a known sex are referred to by their respective male or female pronoun (he and she; him and her). It is uncommon to use singular they instead of it for something other than a life form. See also English personal pronouns Gender neutrality in English Notional agreement Spivak pronoun Third-person pronoun#Historical, regional, and proposed gender-neutral singular pronouns Neopronoun Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns Notes References Sources Sources of original examples''' ; quoted in Reader's Digest, 1983, as an example of its awkwardness when referring to both sexes. Bibliography As quoted by Miller and Swift. . N.B.: This is not the English usage authority Henry Watson Fowler. Further reading Amia Srinivasan, "He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita" (review of Dennis Baron, What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She, Liveright, 2020, , 304 pp.), London Review of Books'', vol. 42, no. 13 (2 July 2020), pp. 34–39. Prof. Srinivasan writes (p. 39): "People use non-standard pronouns, or use pronouns in non-standard ways, for various reasons: to accord with their sense of themselves, to make their passage through the world less painful, to prefigure and hasten the arrival of a world in which divisions of sex no longer matter. So too we can choose to respect people's pronouns for many reasons." External links "Anyone who had a heart (would know their own language)" by Geoff Pullum. Transcript of a radio talk. A brief history of singular ‘they’ (OED blog, Dennis Baron) English usage controversies Grammatical number Modern English personal pronouns