I’m writing a sentence that refers to a generic person, gender unknown. When starting the sentence with “he/she,” should I capitalize “he” only, or do you capitalize both pronouns?
For example, if the fundamental meaning of the sentence is “He or she must register.”, would I write:
“He/She must register.”
or
“He/she must register.”
What say the collective?
Just a wild guess.
To me, the slash indicates that either can be the subject. That the sentence could start with either subjectively, if not physically, or temporally, on paper. So each is equal. I would spread the capitalization rule, equally to them.
But just a guess, with some thought.
I would capitalize it thusly:
“Registration is required.”
I disagree. I think capitalize only the first word. If you had a hyphenated word, for instance, you would not capitalize the second half, right?
Anyway if it were my sentence I’d find another way to word it. (“Each person must register”). Reads a lot smoother without that he/she to trip over.
Capitalize only the first word. You’re really just saying “He or she,” and you certainly wouldn’t capitalize “she” in that formulation.
The problem is that “each person” won’t work here. I’m writing the sentence about one single yet-to-be-hired individual who could be either male or female. So it’s more like “He/She will perform the following duties.” There are numerous instances of this in a single paragraph; if I use the peron’s job title in place of “He/She,” the whole thing gets pretty unwieldy.
Sorry, I should have just used that as the example sentence.
What if you wrote something like:
“The candidate must register.”
“The hiree must register.”
“All candidates must register.”
or something along those lines?
That said, to answer your original question, it would be:
“He/she must register.”
The “s” of “she” is not the first word of the sentence, and therefore it is not capitalized.
I agree with most commenters, that you should use different wording. Either way that you use He / she, or She / he, with whatever capitalization scheme can lead to some discomfort in the gender issues. As well as an awkward presentation at many points.
But I still stand by my initial thoughts. Maybe not accepted as proper. But I feel, logically proper.
By the same reasoning, you should say “He or She will perform the following duties.” That’s just as logical.
The thing is, rules of spelling or capitalization aren’t necessarily logical. The rule is that you capitalize the first word in the sentence, not any word that is the subject of the sentence.
That’s why I tend to avoid tthe slash method of indicating that the sex of the candidate is yet to be determined. I would begin each item on the list with:
He (or she; it could be a she)…
If I were reviewing an essay and saw that usage, I’d recommend that it be reworded. Sure, “He/she” is correct, but it looks odd. I’d say it’s similar to starting a sentence with a number. For example: “1939 marked the beginning of World War II.” Since that looks odd, you could spell it out: “Nineteen thirty-nine marked the beginning of World War II.” But that looks even odder, really, since we’re not used to seeing years spelled out (though no one could say that it’s “wrong”). It really should just be reworded: “The year 1939 marked the beginning of World War II”, for example.
Sometimes, you can be “correct,” yet still wrong. Languages are funny.
Hehe. But I think the rules should be logical. He or She. Logically the two are equal, because of the word or. The person reading the sentence may be of one or another gender. ( another reason that the wording should not be gender indicated ) So the reader is the subject of the sentence. The reader is being instructed. The sentence is describing two possible instances. Both equal by the inclusion of “or”. So the sentence could be started with either word. The intent is that both are equally valid as the intent of the following words. Interchangeable. Though it may be currently considered to be correct, to only capitalize the first instance. That should logically be changed to a more correct rule. In my opinion. And logically, given the intent.
Modern convention is to replace “He/she” with they.
“They must register.”
I too would avoid “he/she”. In informal text, I’d replace with “they”. In formal text, I’d replace with an appropriate noun phrase, e.g., “the applicant”. I once volunteered to remove sexist language from the rule book of a trade union, and found that almost always the best solution was to propose replacing “he” or “him” with a phrase like “the secretary” or “the member” – and in many cases, doing this removed possible ambiguity
Maybe you should take up German. 
“The employee”.
The employee shall register with HR for Special High Intensity Training within the first week of employment.
The employee’s duties shall include preparing TPS reports weekly.
The employee’s salary shall be laughable and all benefits illusory.
etc.
The convention is to capitalize the first letter in a sentence, so it’s “He/she” if you must use that construction. I’ve never seen it any other way, although it’s not a common way to start a sentence, so my samples are limited. Here is one book using “he/she” to start a sentence. Here is another. And another. And another. Etc. (I’m just randomly clicking on hits in Google Books. I did actually find one where it was “He/She” just now, but I can’t find it again. From my quick sample, “He/she” seems to be preferred and is less jarring to me than “He/She,” although I don’t really like the “he/she” construction in general, preferring gender-neutral singular pronouns.)
If you’re discussing the requirement that God Him/Herself must register, then it’s “He/She must register.”
That must register, who would our site employ,
Through strange URL’s, whether girl or boy.
Sure, you can always find some sort of outlier exception, but that one has nothing to do with it starting the sentence, but rather the old convention that any third-person references to God get capitalized out of respect or treating it as a proper noun, no matter their placement in the sentence.