Singular they
(Ann Fisher[46] as quoted by Ostade[47]) Nineteenth-century grammarians insisted on he as a gender-neutral pronoun on the grounds of number agreement, while rejecting "he or she" as clumsy,[48] and this was widely adopted: e.g. in 1850, the British Parliament passed an act which provided that, when used in acts of Parliament "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females".
[49][50] Baskervill and Sewell mention the common use of the singular they in their An English Grammar for the Use of High School, Academy and College Class of 1895, but prefer the generic he on the basis of number agreement.
[58][59] Use of the purportedly gender-neutral he remained acceptable until at least the 1960s,[60] though some uses of he were later criticized as being awkward or silly, for instance when referring to:[61] "The ideal that every boy and girl should be so equipped that he shall not be handicapped in his struggle for social progress ...""She and Louis had a game – who could find the ugliest photograph of himself.
In some cases, it is clear from the situation that the persons potentially referred to are likely to be male, as in: "The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options.
Formal: Somebody should let you borrow his book.In 2015, Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage calls this "the now outmoded use of he to mean 'anyone'",[71] stating:[72] From the earliest times until about the 1960s it was unquestionably acceptable to use the pronoun he (and him, himself, his) with indefinite reference to denote a person of either sex, especially after indefinite pronouns and determiners such as anybody, ... every, etc., after gender-neutral nouns such as person ... [but] alternative devices are now usually resorted to.
)In 2016, Garner's Modern English calls the generic use of masculine pronouns "the traditional view, now widely assailed as sexist".
[74] In 1808, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested it and which as neutral pronouns for the word person:[75][76] In the second half of the 20th century, people expressed more widespread concern at the use of male-oriented language.
William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times approved of the use of generic he, mentioning the mnemonic phrase "the male embraces the female".
[79] C. Badendyck from Brooklyn wrote to the New York Times in a reply:[80] The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work.
As he shaves or blow-dries his hair or pulls on his panty-hose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day.By 1980, the movement toward gender-neutral language had gained wide support, and many organizations, including most publishers, had issued guidelines on the use of gender-neutral language,[77] but stopped short of recommending they to be third-person singular with a non-indeterminate, singular antecedent.
[81] Similarly, a study from 2002 looking at a corpus of American and British newspapers showed a preference for they to be used as a singular epicene pronoun.
These are examples of plural they: Which are apparent because they do not work with a generic he or he or she: In addition, for these "notional plural" cases, it would not be appropriate to use themself instead of themselves as in: The singular antecedent can also be a noun such as person, patient, or student: "cognitive dissonance: "a concept in psychology [that] describes the condition in which a person's attitudes conflict with their behaviour".
[98][99] Several social media applications permit account holders to choose to identify their gender using one of a variety of non-binary or genderqueer options,[100] such as genderfluid, agender, or bigender, and to designate pronouns, including they/them, which they wish to be used when referring to them.
[112][113][114] The first non-binary main character on North American television appeared on the Showtime drama series Billions in 2017, with Asia Kate Dillon playing Taylor Mason.
When referring specifically to a person who does not identify with a gender-specific pronoun, however, they and its forms are often preferred.The 7th edition of the American Psychological Association's Publication Manual, released in October 2019, advises using singular "they" when gender is unknown or irrelevant, and gives the following example:[125] For instance, rather than writing "I don't know who wrote this note, but he or she has good handwriting," you might write something like "I don't know who wrote this note, but they have good handwriting.
[98] The Associated Press Stylebook, as of 2017, recommends: "they/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy.
"[131] In The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, Casey Miller and Kate Swift accept or recommend singular uses of they in cases where there is an element of semantic plurality expressed by a word such as "everyone" or where an indeterminate person is referred to, citing examples of such usage in formal speech.
[137] According to the third edition, The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (edited by Robert Burchfield and published in 1996) singular they has not only been widely used by good writers for centuries, but is now generally accepted, except by some conservative grammarians, including the Fowler of 1926, who, it is argued, ignored the evidence: Over the centuries, writers of standing have used they, their, and them with anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun, and the practice has continued in the 20C.
The book's advice for "official writers" (civil servants) is to avoid its use and not to be tempted by its "greater convenience", though "necessity may eventually force it into the category of accepted idiom".
It notes that singular they and them have become much more widespread since Gowers' original comments, but still finds it "safer" to treat a sentence like 'The reader may toss their book aside' as incorrect "in formal English", while rejecting even more strongly sentences like The Times Style and Usage Guide (first published in 2003 by The Times of London) recommends avoiding sentences like by using a plural construction: The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004, Cambridge University Press) finds singular they "unremarkable": For those listening or reading, it has become unremarkable – an element of common usage.
The Economist Style Guide refers to the use of they in sentences like as "scrambled syntax that people adopt because they cannot bring themselves to use a singular pronoun".
Use of they in this sense (everyone needs to feel that they matter) is becoming generally accepted both in speech and in writing, especially where it occurs after an indefinite pronoun such as everyone or someone, but should not be imposed by an editor if an author has used he or she consistently.
[143]The 2011 edition of the New International Version Bible uses singular they instead of the traditional he when translating pronouns that apply to both genders in the original Greek or Hebrew.
[133] The Australian Federation Press Style Guide for Use in Preparation of Book Manuscripts recommends "gender-neutral language should be used", stating that use of they and their as singular pronouns is acceptable.
[145] The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses the prescriptivist argument that they is a plural pronoun and that the use of they with a singular "antecedent" therefore violates the rule of agreement between antecedent and pronoun, but takes the view that they, though primarily plural, can also be singular in a secondary extended sense, comparable to the purportedly extended sense of he to include female gender.
[28] Use of singular they is stated to be "particularly common", even "stylistically neutral" with antecedents such as everyone, someone, and no one, but more restricted when referring to common nouns as antecedents, as in Use of the pronoun themself is described as being "rare" and "acceptable only to a minority of speakers", while use of the morphologically plural themselves is considered problematic when referring to someone rather than everyone (since only the latter implies a plural set).
The real problem with using he is that it unquestionably colours the interpretation, sometimes inappropriately ... he doesn't have a genuinely sex-neutral sense.The alternative he or she can be "far too cumbersome", as in: or even "flatly ungrammatical", as in "Among younger speakers", use of singular they even with definite noun-phrase antecedents finds increasing acceptance, "sidestepping any presumption about the sex of the person referred to", as in: "The person I was with said they hated the film."
Sixty-four percent of panel members accept the sentence No one is willing to work for those wages anymore, are they?Notional agreement is the idea that some uses of they might refer to a grammatically singular antecedent seen as semantically plural: "'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech.
[155] The following shows different types of anaphoric reference, using various pronouns, including they: A study of whether "singular they" is more "difficult" to understand than gendered pronouns found that "singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he or she, particularly when the antecedent is nonreferential" (e.g. anybody, a nurse, or a truck driver) rather than referring to a specific person (e.g. a runner I knew or my nurse).
While the pronoun set derived from it is primarily used for inanimate objects, it is frequently used in an impersonal context when someone's identity is unknown or established on a provisional basis, e.g. "Who is it?"
