(FORTUNE Magazine) – In preparing for this composition, we have spent quite a few hours parsing Language, Gender, and Professional Writing: Theoretical Approaches and Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage, by Francine Wattman Frank and Paula A. Treichler, with contributions by H. Lee Gershuny, Sally McConnell-Ginet, and Susan J. Wolfe, and yet we still say a writer ought to be able to write the way he feels like. This is far from the view of the collective producing the book or of the Modern Language Association, which published it. These folks unanimously posit that the ''he'' four lines back is flagitious or worse. Wait -- they do more than posit. They claim to have evidence that sexist constructions cause femmes up and down the land to suffer career setbacks and loss of self-esteem. They keep threatening to mention some empirical data that a reasonable person could deem nonrisible, but at the last moment keep forgetting to trot it out. So we basically came out the way we went in, to wit, still impressed by Jimmy Walker's dictum that no girl was ever ruined by a book and dubious that she could be undone by a pronoun. Handling ''he'' and ''she'' is Lesson No. 1 in the authors' guidelines. We begin our parade of horribles with: ''The assistant professor should understand the tenure process before he goes through with it.'' But what, in fact, is wrong with that sentence (in which the ''he'' is plainly used generically)? The only answer we can come up with is that a visiting Martian might get the impression all assistant professors were men. The authors nevertheless want you to recast the sentence so that it talks about numerous assistant professors. This makes the pronoun ''they'' and prevents nonearthlings from getting off on the wrong tentacle. Okay, that was an easy one. But how would you repair this sexist sentence (which comes up a few pages later): ''An autobiography coming into a library would be classified as nonfiction if the librarian believed the author, and as fiction if she thought he was lying.'' The problem with the sentence is, of course, its stereotypical assumptions: that the author is a man and the librarian a woman. The guidelines first point out that it won't work to just make both parties of the same sex because then the pronouns' antecedents become unclear. A second possibility: Defy stereotypes and transpose the sexes, i.e., the librarian becomes a guy and the author a doll. But it seems this daring maneuver would only entangle you in another set of stereotypes: ''that women lie and men make judgments.'' Hm. This is getting serious. Correct feminist solution: The neuter in charge of the stacks makes judgments ''depending on whether or not the author seems to be telling the truth.'' Sounds like a tough job. Having recently met a corporate CEO who cravenly called himself a chair, we turned to see what the guidebook recommends in the chair-chairman-chairperson area. It turns out to be surprisingly permissive: Two out of the three terms are acceptable. We can hardly wait to see which one wins out at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.