Last week, contributor Walt Meyer offered up a modest proposal for how to solve the one-size-doesn't-fit-all, masculine/feminine pronoun dilemma ("Ladies and Gentlemen, I Have a Solution To the 'He or She' Headaches," Word Watch Oct. 1). I must wonder how firmly his tongue was planted in his cheek as he wrote it.

To replace the cumbersome he or she, his or her construction, Mr. Meyer proposes "new words" in the form of unisex pronouns -- "E instead of 's/he' " and "Hir instead of 'his or her.' "

I like that idea about as much as I like the idea of unisex bathrooms, which is not a lot.

Language legislation doesn't mesh well with the natural evolution of language. Our existing pronouns evolved gradually from earlier Anglo-Saxon forms. Esperanto is an example of intelligent design, linguistically speaking, and look at how widely spoken that is.

One of his justifications is that we "often add new words to accommodate things that simply didn't exist before." Videographer, e-mail, flight attendant and firefighter were some of his examples.

Yes, they're new things, but the cited examples are new compounds or hybrids that stem from existing and familiar root words. The solution of using such constructions as hir for him and her and e for she and he, however, necessitates fabricating what amounts to actual new words. There's the rub.

Sure, Shakespeare did it. If he needed a word that didn't exist, he made one up. But even his coinages were often variations of existing words. Of the ones he made up, some stuck around (hob-nob and hoodwinked) and some didn't. Of course that was in the early stages of Modern English, before the Oxford English Dictionary was around to provide us with more than half a million choices. Besides, he was Shakespeare.

I suggested using the "sloppy construction" of s/he in my own book on writing, but only when writing informally. (Maybe it was my example that made Mr. Meyer's gorge buoyant. One hopes.) The first time I saw s/he in print, it was used by essayist-novelist-gadfly Harlan Ellison, but I don't know who originated it. I respectfully disagree with the choice of descriptor. One person's sloppy is another person's streamlined. S/he's only shortcoming is the fact that it's unpronounceable.

I wish Mr. Meyer luck in his quest. His idea would solve the problem, but it would require conscious tinkering, and a living, breathing language doesn't take kindly to that.

-- JAY SPEYERER, Mt. Lebanon

I found Walt Meyer's column on gender pronoun problems to be very interesting, but I found his recommended solutions to be quite awkward. I doubt that people would remember them easily or use them correctly.

Why not just go with a variation on what some people already do: Just use the plural form of they, them, their instead of the singular.

Here is an example:

"After each student registers, they must bring their registration card to their adviser making sure that the card is their own --that is, the card belongs to them."

Yes, I realize that using a plural for a singular is "wrong." But language does evolve, and this would be so much easier to remember than e, hir, hirs and hem.

-- SHAWN PARATTO, Swissvale

My solution to the cumbersome pronouns problem is much simpler than what Walt Meyer proposes.

Males would use the existing masculine forms, females the familiar feminine forms. This is what everyone always did before Women's Lib, so there wouldn't be anything new for men to learn. The ladies should find it easier to use just she or her than all those other silly PC forms.

This, presumably, would leave "he/she" and "his/hers" for use only by hermaphrodites.

The language certainly does not need any oddball forms like hir, hirs and hem to bewilder foreigners and, certainly, most native speakers of English. Most Americans I know would be rhyming hir with fir, not hear.

-- RON SERAFINE, Butler