Jul 31, 2009
More and more smart people are forsaking the idea that they shouldn’t be singular.
Alan Jacobs publicly acknowledges his acceptance of singular they.
He won’t use it, but his students may.
I’m proud of you, professor.
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Related:
- A grammar book I paged through said this sentence is correct
- One time you shouldn’t use they/them/their as singular
- 3 pronoun options if you’re against singular they
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They is?
aaarrrrgh
Nooooooooo!
If it’s good enough for Chaucer, it’s good enough for me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine
doesn’t this defeat the point of language? i’m already frustrated enough that english doesn’t differentiate between singular and plural “you”. if we’re not going to stick with “they” meaning third person plural, then what’s the point of distinguishing plurarlity at all? and if there is a point to knowing whether something is singular or plural, than how are you going to be able to tell, if there’s nothing in the language to differentiate it?
thus endeth the rant.
Context. You don’t need two versions of “you” because you can almost always tell if its singular or plural by context. Or, as in the above sentence perhaps, number doesn’t matter. Ditto for third person pronouns. Just because we loose precision in a particular aspect of grammar doesn’t mean we can’t speak accurately on the whole.
Well, reasonably speaking, there are times when it is preferable to use “they” instead of “he” – especially when one is talking to an inquisitive elderly female relative who would jump to awkward conclusions if you make a slip and mention a friend who is male.
e.g. “I was talking to a friend the other day, and they said…”
Cop out. Don’t use a pronoun then. Say “my friend”, or in your example “I was talking to a friend the other day who said that….”
Yes, well, ok. Fair enough. However, it can get difficult if what my friend said was particularly interesting and hence the conversation involving a reference to my friend’s statements lasts longer than about 20 seconds.
I’m so glad. It will save so much time in rearranging sentences to avoid it. Time that could be better spent.
Is nothing sacred? Good grief, AP. Next thing you’ll be calling for an end to dress pants in church!! Oh, wait….
So would it be OK to say: “The patient was not given the pain medications they wanted, so they was angry.” ???
Using “they” singular along with “were” when talking about an obscure individual is formal American English and makes a lot of sense.