[9][10] Outside of these very limited contexts, use of it as a pronoun for people is generally avoided, due to the feeling that it is dehumanizing.
[11] Traditionally, in English, if the gender of a person was not known or ambiguous, then the masculine pronouns were often used by default (e.g. a good student always does his homework).
[9] Inanimate objects with which humans have a close relationship, such as ships, cars and countries considered as political, rather than geographical, entities, are sometimes referred to using feminine pronouns such as she and her.
Due to this supposed grammatical inconsistency, use of singular they was discouraged by some grammarians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in favor of using generic he.
[14][15] In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged for some non-binary people, or when the sex or social gender of a person is unknown or unspecified.
This is in contrast to many languages in which such pronouns agree with the gender of the head noun of the NP in which they appear.
In Italian, in contrast, the same sentences is Lei ha visto suo fratello.
However, in informal and less careful usage this rule may not be consistently followed;[18] it is common to hear Jay and me will arrive... and between you and I.
When a pronoun stands alone without an explicit verb or preposition, the objective form is commonly used, even when traditional grammarians might prefer the subjective: Who's sitting here?
(Here I might be regarded as grammatically correct, since it is short for I am (sitting here), but it would sound formal and pedantic, unless followed by am.)
Here the objective form is again predominant in informal usage[1] (they are older than us), as would be expected if than were analyzed as a preposition.