Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct

September 10, 2009 in agreement, ambiguity, English, grammar, history, languagelog, linguistics, plurals, pronouns, quantification, Uncategorized, words, writing | Tags: anyone, c. s. lewis, chaucer, david gelernter, everyone, geoff pullum, he or she, indefinite pronoun, singular they

Suppose you were reading and came to the following line:

“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.”

Would you …
(a) continue reading, because that’s a perfectly acceptable sentence, or
(b) throw a tantrum and insist that the author is an imbecile speeding the wholesale destruction of the English language?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably answering (a). If you’re answering (b), I regret to inform you that you hate the writing of C. S. Lewis.

And if you’re the sort to answer (b), the sort of person who rages at the alleged grammatical buffoonery of your fellows, I’m sure it’s because you think you’re doing us all a favor, and that your condescending tone is justified because: first, you’re being helpful regardless of the tone you’re using; second, people only learn through negative conditioning, and so it is your duty, however unpleasant, to rub their noses in it to keep them from going on doing it; third, only a truly illiterate mouth-breather would be so moronic as to make such a mistake, and such imbeciles are below contempt and probably don’t even realize that you’re condescending to them anyway; and fourth, given the Heruclean effort you’ve put into learning the English language as impeccably as you did, it’s really only fair that you get to be a little self-satisfied and perhaps even gloat a smidge.

The only problem with this view is that all you’ve managed to learn about English is how to get your brain to release some satisfying endorphins every time you blindly regurgitate some authority figure’s unjustified assertion. You’re not helping; you’re just getting someone to pretend to agree with you long enough to shut you up. Or worse, you’re scaring people into submission to a point where they feel compelled to preface their speech with apologies for any unknown violence their words are committing against the presumed propriety of the language. Never forget, though, that language is the people’s. Your witless superstition will, by-and-large, be ignored by the speakers of the language, and the alleged impropriety will almost certainly win out in the end. Don’t mistake yourself for a brave defender of our language against the barbarians at the gates when, in truth, you’re nothing but a millennialist shouting about the end-times of the English language. Meanwhile, the world spins on, and the language flourishes, hale and hearty.

One great example of this situation is the shouting down of those who use singular they. I’ve wanted for some time to have one place to send everyone who complains about singular they, a single page that can debunk whatever junk they’re peddling against it. There’s been lots of great stuff written about why singular they is acceptable, but every time I want to smash the arguments against it, I have to waste time jumping through old Language Log posts and books and whatnot, so I figured I’d finally go about summarizing it all. Without further ado, here’s the evidence for singular they, and why you ought to stop “correcting” it.

Historical usage: Geoffrey Chaucer is widely credited as the father of English literature. He was one of the first well-known authors to write in Middle English instead of the prevailing literary tongue, Latin, bringing legitimacy to the language. And, what’s this? Why, it’s a line from The Canterbury Tales, ca. 1400:

“And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame,
They wol come up […]”

It’s a little hard to tell in the Middle English, but whoso is a quantified expression, like whoever, that is syntactically singular, but then is paired to the syntactically plural they. So, since at least the beginnings of literary Middle English, 600 years ago, it’s been all right to use singular they. It’s been consistently attested since then; Henry Churchyard reports examples from the Oxford English Dictionary in 1434, 1535, 1643, 1749, 1848, and a wide variety of years in between. There has literally been no point since 1400 when singular they went unattested in contemporary English.

Usage by good writers: Lest one counter the historical point by claiming that it was a mistake or an illiterate usage, it should be noted that singular they has been employed by revered writers throughout its history. A list of examples from some such authors (including Chaucer’s and C. S. Lewis’s quotes above) is available on Churchyard’s site. Among the luminaries: Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Shakespeare, William Thackeray, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage has still more examples for those who prefer their empirical data to be overwhelming. And, if you subscribe to Mark Liberman’s one-liner “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” you’ll be interested to see that the King James Version, along with the Tyndale, Bishop’s, and Geneva Bibles, along a range of other versions of the Christian Bible all employ singular theys. (I’m not sure of the stance of non-Christian religious texts. I imagine no religion has a commandment disavowing singular they, but I have not studied comparative religion.)

Acceptance by authorities: So it’s historically attested, with usage by great writers. “But great writers are fallible!”, cries the grammaticaster*, ignoring the implication in this that the grammaticaster is substantially more aware of the rules of our language than its best writers. “Grammatical authorities agree that singular they is a barbarism!”

This appeal to imagined authority wouldn’t be convincing regardless, but it rings especially hollow when you realize it’s patently false. Certainly many prescriptivists assert that singular they is an affront to the language. Some even put it in books. Eric Partridge, for instance, says it’s so in Usage and Abusage, supplying exactly no argumentation for his opinion.

But The New Fowler’s, 3rd Edition, which carries on its front cover the subtitle “The acknowledged authority on English usage”, takes a neutral-to-positive stance on singular they, calling the issue “unresolved” but noting that it “is being left unaltered by copy editors” and that aside from pedants, “such constructions are hardly noticed any more or are not widely felt to lie in a prohibited zone.” [p. 776] (This is an especially interesting stance because it goes against Fowler’s own original position from 1926.) Grammar Girl also comes down unambiguously in favor it, if she’s your cup of tea.

Some old style guides even saw the light a century ago. An English Grammar by Baskervill & Sewell, originally published in 1896, states that while he is preferred to singular they in general, they is “frequently found when the antecedent includes or implies both genders. The masculine does not really represent a feminine antecedent […]” (Italics in original.) Further, as an exercise, they give examples of singular they, and tell the reader, “In the above sentences, unless both genders are implied, change the pronoun to agree with its antecedent.” (Again, italics in original.)

There was even an article in Robert Hartwell Fiske’s fervently prescriptivist Vocabula Review arguing for singular they. The money quote: “We have seen that history is not on the side of those who would ban singular they from written texts; neither is logic; nor is majority rule.” If you needed an authority figure to tell you that singular they was all right, well, I hope you might find it harder to find one against singular they.

Singular/plural syntactic disagreement: Then, of course, there’re the self-styled logicians who say that they can’t be used with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because they have different numbers. After all, you say they are but everybody is, and so that proves it. A moment’s reflection shows that this argument is fallacious, especially if in that moment’s reflection you think of a sentence like

(1) My family stops by regularly, and they always bring pizzas.

My family is syntactically singular in American English, as seen in the conjugation of stops. They is syntactically plural, as seen in the conjugation of bring. And yet, (1) is a well-formed sentence, and the other option (“My family stops by regularly and it always brings pizzas”) sounds absurd. The key point here is that it’s not the syntactic number, but rather the semantic number that matters. And everybody is semantically plural, just like they. Don’t believe me? Consider this trio from Geoff Pullum:

(2a) Everybody knows each other.
(2b) They know each other.
(2c) *He knows each other.

Each other is a reciprocal pronoun that requires a plural antecedent, or in non-linguistic terms, whoever each other refers to has to be plural. So it works in (2b), where it can refer to the semantically plural they, and it doesn’t work in (2c) with the semantically singular he. Since (2a) is a grammatical sentence, we know that everybody can be semantically plural. Since everybody can be semantically plural, we know that there’s nothing wrong with using they with it. And, as we’ll see in the next section, this agreement only matters if you insist that everybody and they have a pronoun-antecedent relationship, which probably isn’t the right way of looking at it.

It’s not really a pronoun relationship anyway: The above argument supposes that they is a pronoun referring to a syntactically plural but syntactically singular quantified expression like everybody. But what if you’ve got a semantically singular one like anybody? Is it essential that they and the quantified expression agree in number at all? Steven Pinker argues that it isn’t:

“The logical point that everyone but the language mavens intuitively grasps is that everyone and they are not an antecedent and a pronoun referring to the same person in the world, which would force them to agree in number. They are a “quantifier” and a “bound variable,” a different logical relationship. Everyone returned to their seats means “For all X, X returned to X’s seat.” The “X” is simply a placeholder that keeps track of the roles that players play across different relationships: the X that comes back to a seat is the same X that owns the seat that X comes back to. The their there does not, in fact, have plural number, because it refers neither to one thing nor to many things; it does not refer at all.”

And that’s the weird thing. Here’re these pedants crying about how English has to adhere rigidly to logic, and they don’t notice the one time the language actually behaves like a system of formal logic. The point is that singular they can behave non-referentially; it’s an entirely different word from the standard referential pronouns he or plural they in these cases. In fact, Pinker notes that some other languages have different words for the two meanings. Since this they doesn’t pick out any specific entity or entities, it functions like the variable x in the mathematical expression 2(x + 7). Can he be used in the same way as they, as a bound variable? Sure, but that leads to the next point.

he isn’t gender-neutral: Some claim that singular they is unnecessary because he is gender-neutral, and that this whole kerfuffle about singular they being in any way good or useful only came about when “arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state.” That’s from an article in The Weekly Standard by David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale. See,

“Ideologues can lie themselves blue in the face without changing the fact that, to those who know modern English as it existed until the cultural revolution and still does exist in many quarters, the neutral he ‘has lost all suggestion of maleness.'”

Yep, back before the evil, scary cultural revolution of the 1970s, no one ever saw anything odd about gender-neutral he. And we see this by the fact that back in 1896, when women couldn’t vote in the U.S., Baskervill and Sewell thought that he sounded weird with mixed company. And we see evidence in the fact that singular they has been used since Chaucer’s time. No, wait, that’s the opposite of his claim! Nuts!

If you really think that he is gender-neutral, you ought to find nothing wrong with the following sentences:

(3a) At the funeral, everyone was dressed to the nines, each wearing his swankest tie or nicest dress.
(3b) Is it your brother or your sister who can hold his breath for four minutes?

Geoff Pullum came up with (3b), and I think it’s the clincher. I just can’t picture any competent speaker of English saying it and thinking it correct. Sometimes it might be the case that he is approximately gender-neutral, but it’s not so in the general case. There are many such examples where he sounds bad compared to a truly gender-neutral pronoun.

Equal ambiguity: Some others, often members of the “Don’t start a sentence with since!” set, complain that another problem with using they with a quantified or generic expression is that it introduces ambiguity. For instance, who does they refer to in

(4) Everyone meeting the royal family said that they were gracious?

Yes, that’s ambiguous as to whether the visitors or the royal family were gracious. Yes, replacing they with he removes the ambiguity. But what about

(5) Everyone meeting the new principal said that he was gracious?

What’s this? He has led to an ambiguity? Inconceivable! Note that (5) wouldn’t be ambiguous with a singular they. Like the Oxford comma, sometimes singular they introduces an ambiguity, but just as often it avoids an ambiguity. Ambiguity is par for the course with pronouns with multiple referents, anyway:

(6a) Bob asked Jim if he was fat.
(6b) The Romans befriended the Gauls, but they slew them.

These sorts of ambiguities are common, even in edited writing, because the surrounding sentences give context to the ambiguous sentence. Pilgrim’s Progress, for instance, one of the most prominent books in English literature, has almost 40 examples of “they * them” (e.g., they overtook them, they seek to stifle them). That’s a lot more examples than one would expect if this sort of ambiguity were so crippling. So ambiguity in singular they isn’t a deal-breaker either.

Summary: You don’t have to use singular they yourself. You can go ahead and re-work your sentences to avoid it. You can employ he or she, or s/he, or a made-up gender-neutral pronoun of your own devising like xe. You can even just stubbornly plow on, using he as a gender-neutral pronoun until you grow tired of people pointing out that it isn’t really. I don’t care, and you’re not grammatically wrong. But you’re just making a fool of yourself when you go around telling users of singular they that they’re wrong, because they’re not.

—

*: Grammaticaster, by the way, is one of my new favorite words, learned from the book Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams. It refers to a “petty, self-styled export on grammar, usually a niggling, precise type who can stab a bony finger at a dangling participle or split infinitive but lacks a true appreciation of writing in all its riches and varied styles. The rule-conscious pedant who sees writing not as good or bad but as right or wrong.” Or as the OED more briefly puts it, “A petty or inferior grammarian. (Used in contempt.)”

**:The information above was compiled from a number of sources, most of which are mentioned in the post, but here’s a few others that I found useful and may or may not have linked to above:
Grammar Girl: Generic Singular Pronouns
Language Log: Shakespeare used they with singular antecedents so there
Language Log: Singular they with known sex
Language Log: “Singular they”: God said it, I believe it, that settles it.
Language Log: Lying feminist ideologues wreck English, says Yale prof
The Lousy Linguist: Singular ‘they’ is old, logical, and grammatical
Wikipedia: Donkey pronoun

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About Me

I'm Gabe Doyle, currently an assistant professor at San Diego State University, in the Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages, and a member of the Digital Humanities. Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral scholar in the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford University. And before that, I got a doctorate in linguistics from UC San Diego and a bachelor's in math from Princeton.

My research and teaching connects language, the mind, and society (in fact, I teach a 500-level class with that title!). I use probabilistic models to understand how people learn, represent, and comprehend language. These models have helped us understand the ways that parents tailor their speech to their child's needs, why sports fans say more or less informative things while watching a game, and why people who disagree politically fight over the meaning of "we".

271 comments

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September 10, 2009 at 6:31 pm

Meg

It’s good to know you have not died of dry drowning Gabe

September 10, 2009 at 6:35 pm

Karen

Thank you. You’ve freed up part of my brain. I haven’t been correcting anyone but I have been stubbornly rephrasing my own work to avoid singular they, gender-neutral he, and s/he when, of course, singular they was the most natural choice.

September 10, 2009 at 7:40 pm

Bill S.

This situation is a perennial problem for those of us teaching composition sections — we (or at least, most of us) know there’s nothing wrong with singular ‘they’, but we also know some of our students will get marked off in other courses for using it. If we caution students to beware of it, we’re feeding the problem, but if we don’t, we worry about being responsible for the missing points. I just have students consciously practice switching away from it when they need to deal with someone who probably needs more bran in their diet.

I have, however, found a good social tactic for dealing with those who fulminate about singular ‘they’: play along for a minute, then start castigating users of singular ‘you’ (*everyone* knows the singular is ‘thee’! What will it do to language if we allow such sloppiness?!).

September 11, 2009 at 3:25 am

Stan

A solid and spirited defence. Thank you.

Singular-plural boundaries seem especially popular outlets for pedantry, another example being “one of the only” (which I notice you’ve also written about). I sometimes wonder about the psychology underlying these attitudes, especially when there seems to be a connection between their manifestations. Part of my interest no doubt derives from the fact that I have been susceptible to this kind of pedantry myself in the past, and I don’t feel that I am necessarily immune to it.

September 12, 2009 at 8:33 am

The Ridger

When everyone heard the fire alarm, he grabbed his coat and ran out… and everyone else stayed put and died.

September 13, 2009 at 8:09 pm

blog.rightreading.com » Hot links

[…] The singular “they” : Its lineage is more distinguished than you might think […]

September 15, 2009 at 11:57 am

Dawn

I’m offering up an off-topic comment: Would you happen to know of any interesting conferences that cover topics similar to those you cover in your blog? I’m looking for a writing/grammar conference or seminar that focuses on the actual act of writing versus the typical focus of trying to get published.

I think your blog is brilliant!

Keep up the great posts!
Dawn

September 15, 2009 at 11:58 am

Dawn

As a follow-on, if you know of any associations or professional groups that specialize in non-prescriptivist grammar I’d love to hear about them…

September 19, 2009 at 6:02 pm

John Cowan

I believe that something IS changing over time, though, namely the kind of antecedent associated with singular they. When used with indefinite pronouns such as everyone, it goes back to Middle English; when used with semantically bleached nouns, like person, it’s several centuries old. But its use in indefinite constructions with ordinary nouns, like Every tenant is welcome here if they stay quiet and pay the rent on time, I suspect that before about the 1970s we would have heard he instead — partly because most often tenants were men, and the exceptions could be ignored.

LL has some great examples of singular they even when the gender of the antecedent is not in doubt, and MWDCEU has one where the antecedent is any young lady! It’s all about indefiniteness, not about gender neutrality.

September 19, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Jonathan

I shudder to think of all the times I’ve corrected singular “they” to “he or she” in the writing of others — in one case, I made the text so incomprehensible and inelegant by this means that the author asked someone else to revert all the changes.

Gradually, through exposure to Language Log, Burchfield’s Fowler, and the Merriam Webster usage guide, I have been persuaded, when there is no house style to the contrary, to leave well enough alone.

September 20, 2009 at 8:56 am

Sashura

Thanks for this post. I will refer my fellow translators to it.

Singular they is of great help as a means of avoiding gender assignment when translating into English from many languages where not only inanimate nouns are gender sensitive, but all agreeing antecedents, verbs (past tense in Slavic languages), adjectives and participles also take syntactic forms of the corresponding gender.

While tracing the use of singular they back to Chaucer is exciting lexicologically, I would strongly support John Cowan’s view here that political correctness/feminist pressure is the underlying force in proliferation of the use of singular they. I’ve grown up thinking that it is perfectly inoffensive to use Man in generic sense, but now a massive salvo of pots and pans is launched at me if I ever dare say Men instead of humans or persons.

English has roots in continental European languages where gender assignment is a norm rather than an exception. The uncertainty about singular they stems, I think, from the gender rich original linguistic sources of modern English. It is a natural resistance to gender cleansing that we all feel.

September 21, 2009 at 12:37 am

Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Link Farm and Open Thread, Brain Scanning Dead Fish Edition

[…] The singular “They” and the many reasons it’s correct […]

September 21, 2009 at 10:23 am

A'Llyn

Nice. I will ‘they’ it up in future with even greater impunity than in the past.

I was also pleased to find that I recognized the quote as C.S. Lewis despite not having read the Chronicles in years. Was that Lucy, near the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?

The things that stick in your head.

Like grammar rules!

September 21, 2009 at 3:16 pm

Daniel

It is with some amusement that I say that I did in fact find the original quote (“She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.”) somewhat awkward, but for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the singular “they”. The inclusion of the word “do” struck me as stilted and unnecessary, and something about the distance between “everybody” and “who falls” is bothersome to me. But the singular “they”? That’s fine. In fact, had I written the sentence I’d probably have injected another singular “they” into it, replacing “who falls” with “when they fall”.

September 22, 2009 at 12:24 pm

Makri

Do you really find “Everybody knows each other” grammatical? I’m not a native speaker of English, but to me, it feels very odd, just like the supposed equivalent in my native language.

The logical reason would be that “everybody” doesn’t designate an individual and thus has no semantic number at all – it’s a quantifier ranging over singular individuals. I wonder if some people have “everybody” in their lexicon with a meaning like “all people”, which would be a plural individual…

September 22, 2009 at 7:29 pm

Daniel

Makri,

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I definitely find “everybody knows each other” grammatical.

September 23, 2009 at 12:46 am

Sashura

Makri,

Here is a good set of examples showing the use of each and all, and also demonstrating the vacillations between generic he and singular they:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. (Wikipedia)

“Socialism is ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their DEEDS,’ and communism is ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their NEEDS.’ (YCL of the USA web site)

[Communism,] a Utopia in which all citizens will work according to their ability and receive according to their needs. (Russian writers and Soviet society 1917-1978, by Ronald Hingley)

September 23, 2009 at 9:24 am

Makri.

Daniel, thanks for the confirmation of that remarkable fact. If I may ask a follow-up question, what happens if you use “each” and “everyone”, respectively, instead of “everybody” in the sentence?

Sashura, why are your quites addressed to me? … I don’t see what bearing they have on my question.

September 23, 2009 at 10:33 am

Sashura

Makri, you asked about
Everybody knows each other –
I thought there was an associational link to your phrase.
I didn’t mean to upset or confuse you.

September 23, 2009 at 11:06 am

links for 2009-09-23 « Embololalia

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct « Motivated Grammar Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct September 10, 2009 in English, agreement, ambiguity, grammar, history, languagelog, linguistics, plurals, pronouns, quantification, words, writing | Tags: anyone, c. s. lewis, chaucer, david gelernter, everyone, geoff pullum, he or she, indefinite pronoun, singular they […]

September 23, 2009 at 7:20 pm

Daniel

Makri:

“Everyone knows each other” is definitely grammatical, and to my ear sounds more natural than “Everybody knows each other”. The latter is something I probably wouldn’t say myself although I see nothing wrong with it; “everyone knows each other” sounds like something I might say.

“Each knows each other” definitely sounds off to me. I can’t think of any instance where “each” by itself works as the subject of a sentence. I say “by itself” because “Each of them knows each other” is fine.

September 24, 2009 at 5:04 am

I found this post via Language Hat, and I’m thrilled somebody has taken the time to summarise all this; LL and others cover the points, but it’s it’s great to have everything in one place.

But the aside in your summary about “stupid made-up” gender neutral terms like “xe”, brief as it is, seems to miss the point by dismissing them out of hand. Their advocates don’t always make the case very well, but innovations like “xe” et al. address a problem, which is that singular they is not really usable for singular referents with a high degree of definiteness (e.g. “I waited an hour for Kim but they never showed up.”). So “xe” fills this gap, where the speaker wants to refer to a particular person but (1) doesn’t know / care about their gender, (2) the person is not male or female, or other situations you can imagine for yourself. This might seem odd to some, but it’s a very real communicative need for some speakers of English.

September 27, 2009 at 10:27 am

tcSHILLINGFORD.org » Blog Archive » All your grammars are belong to us

[…] Timing, as they say, is everything. Perhaps his hallmark post thus far (for me, at any rate) is his thorough argument, with ample evidence, of why the singular “they” is perfectly […]

September 28, 2009 at 8:35 pm

Zack J.

It’s not often that the respective worlds of linguistics and dinosaurs collide, but when they do:

http://xkcd.com/145/

Great article.

October 5, 2009 at 12:19 am

Craig Morris

Great post, see

http://notesfromotherside.blogspot.com/2009/10/everybody-thought-it-was-stupid-didnt.html

October 9, 2009 at 11:01 am

fsteele

I’m all for singular ‘they’, but the Lewis example could be defended as ‘everybody’ being in effect a plural there. I’m not sure that ‘their’ IS really a singular in that sentence.

The picture is of the camera panning out from Lucy to a group of people in the water (as happened in the story) — and on to all the children in the narratee’s world as well.

Nesbit was full of such pannings iirc; it was a style feature of old omni didactic children’s lit.

October 19, 2009 at 6:08 pm

Rich Baum

“The only problem with this view is that all you’ve managed to learn about English is how to get your brain to release some satisfying endorphins every time you blindly regurgitate some authority figure’s unjustified assertion. You’re not helping…”

October 29, 2009 at 5:42 am

Jennie

Hi, nice blog! I found it while searching the phrase “reason why” which really bugs me. :) Shouldn’t it be “reason that” or just “the reason”? (I never know whether the question mark goes inside the quotation mark or outside, either.)

November 1, 2009 at 9:20 pm

Vance Maverick

Once all San Franciscans knew 17 reasons why.

But more seriously, is it really incorrect to say “There are 17 reasons why logic is not the test of grammaticality”?

November 18, 2009 at 10:16 pm

John Cowan

Sashura wrote: “I would strongly support John Cowan’s view here that political correctness/feminist pressure is the underlying force in proliferation of the use of singular they.”

I don’t at all hold that view. If anything is moving singular they along other than internally motivated language change (and most change is internally motivated), I believe it to be the actual and increasing visibility of women in society. Every tenant … he is problematic nowadays not because of mere verbal complaints about it, but because so many tenants actually are women, and he is simply inappropriate.

November 19, 2009 at 2:32 am

Sashura

@John Cowan
Sorry, I didn’t mean to ascribe to you the views you don’t hold. I simply thought that the notion of pressure followed from what you said.

When you say that using ‘he’ is ‘inappropriate’, because there are women tenants, it implies, to me, if not pressure, then, at least, awkwardness in a grammatical aspect of the language arising from social changes. I described these changes as ‘political correctness/feminist pressure’ in a broader sense, than organised censure by certain militant groups.

I work in English and Russian, writing and translating. One big difference between the two languages is that Russian words have gender attribution. Generic words also have gender which does not create a problem when you deal with domestic animals (mostly feminine) or cereal crops (also mostly feminine), but words describing professions, jobs or social status are mostly masculine. Tenant is masculine, but a native Russian would innately understand it, and the refering masculine pronoun (he) to cover both, men and women. In fact, a woman tenant might use the masculine noun form to describe herself as such, even though there is a feminine form of the noun. In my line of work I constantly feel the pressure, however you describe its source, too adapt the language I use, be it English or Russian, to new post-feminist realities. I have stopped, for instance, using ‘men’ in generic sense and use ‘humans’. When a pronoun refers to a child (masculine) I make the point of using ‘he’ and ‘she’ in equal measure, if singular is required by context.

November 19, 2009 at 5:08 am

Singular they « home is where the heart is

[…] und noch ein kürzlich erschiener Blogeintrag, der sich damit befasst. (den mag ich […]

November 24, 2009 at 1:58 pm

John Cowan

Just so. Because English has natural gender (with a few optional exceptions like ships and countries), saying “he” implies a referent that is not merely grammatically masculine but actually male. As long as males were most of the agents in society, using the male pronoun was marginally satisfactory: female tenants, like male calico cats, could mostly be ignored. Now that is no longer true.

In any case, there are situations in which the notion that “he” is generic simply won’t hold up: we cannot say, and never have been able to say, “*Either the husband or the wife may provide his signature for comparison”, for example. There are no alternatives here to “his or her signature” except “their signature”.

November 25, 2009 at 8:04 am

voitteuneweme

Phat article, good looking blog, added it to my favorites.

December 2, 2009 at 6:37 pm

Jason

“You can employ […]some stupid made-up gender-neutral pronoun of your own devising like xe.”

I’ve always found English has a gender-neutral singular pronoun: it. I find it mystifying that we are so horrified at the idea of using “it” to refer to person/animal of unknown gender. But that’s just me.

December 2, 2009 at 10:07 pm

Daniel

The problem with using “it” is simple: Most people see it as being tied to the neuter gender just as much as “he” is to the male gender and “she” is to the female gender. If people are bothered by using “he” on the grounds that it assumes the person is male, then it’s no wonder they are bothered by using a word that assumes the person is asexual.

Sure, we could start using “it” for gender-unknown entities. But it would be just as much an extension of that word’s meaning as it would be an extension of “he” or “she” to use one of those words for gender-unknown entities.

December 3, 2009 at 10:33 am

Jason

I recognize that problem (hence “we are so horrified at the idea”) but I don’t think it’s a grammatical consideration. If we don’t know the gender of an animal we have no trouble saying “it” until we do know–so the use has precedence. It’s only with humans that we can’t bring ourselves to using “it”–though I’ve heard it used for babies. It seems perfectly suited to a situation where you are discussing a generic, unknown human.

December 4, 2009 at 11:56 am

Jason

In a fun twist, shortly after reading this article (and agreeing with most of it), I came across this gem: “A truly great player thinks not only of themself, but strives…” Despite being open to language evolving, this one hurt my eyes a bit :)

December 13, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Person plural? - UsingEnglish.com ESL Forum

[…] Re: Person plural? Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct Motivated Grammar […]

December 18, 2009 at 4:50 pm

John Cowan

“It” is only used for babies by people who don’t like babies, in my experience.

January 2, 2010 at 3:06 pm

thecynicalromantic

John Cowan comes closest to answering the “why not use ‘it'” question, actually.

Daniel, “it” does not refer to neuter gender. “It” refers to objects. It does not refer to neutrois-gendered people, and when people use “it” to describe non-gender-conforming people, it’s frequently been to dehumanize and dismiss them. (And it’s rarely been used to refer to asexual people; most asexuals are either male or female, since asexuality is a sexual orientation, not a gender identity.)

“It” is not an option, not because “it” does not have a tradition of application to humans, but because it DOES have a tradition of application to humans–ones the speaker wants to discount and marginalize. People get called “it” all the time. As an insult.

This makes it very, very much *not* favored amongst people who are sensitive enough to identity politics to be pioneering and insisting upon the use of nonsexist language.

January 3, 2010 at 4:38 pm

Daniel

“It” does not refer to objects. Perhaps “neuter gender” is not the best term for what it does refer to, but there are examples where something being an object and something being referred to as “it” do not coincide:

1. Animals — Many people use “it” for any animal other than humans. Even those who avoid using “it” for animals still use it for plants, which are also living creatures.

2. Vehicles — Water vessels and (to a lesser extent) airplanes and automobiles are often referred to as “she”, even by people who do not personify them. Admittedly, this usage is declining among the general population, but that it exists at all indicates that a distinction between usage of “it” and designation as an object exists.

As for neutrois-gendered people, that is a separate issue from babies whose gender is unknown but assumed by most people to exist. And I doubt the existence of neutrois-gendered people has much influence on people’s willingness (or lack thereof) to use “it” for a baby of unknown gender, considering that a large percentage of the population (perhaps even a majority) isn’t even aware of the existence of neutrois-gendered people in the first place.

January 18, 2010 at 5:15 pm

Shino

Earlier in the comments, jo mentioned that using singular “they” with specific people isn’t possible in English, like in her example sentence “I waited an hour for Kim but they never showed up.” I agree that this is the case, but does anyone know why this is? “They” seems to be becoming more versatile over time, but I can’t see it ever expanding to cover this context, because when you use “their” in this way (e.g. “Jamie washed their dishes in the sink”), the sentence always seems to imply that the “their” is identifying an unmentioned group of people rather than the actual person mentioned. Is there any sort of grammatical rule or explanation for why this is?

March 4, 2010 at 4:14 pm

Christopher

Singular THEY:

I really appreciate your comprehensive and thoughtful article. It’s a pleasure reading intelligent, in-depth material like yours. You sound very competent, if somewhat perturbed. Surely, there must be arrogant people out there who judge others for their grammatical ‘errors.’ That’s deplorable.

There are some of us out here, though, who aren’t angry at all about this issue. After all, I use the same constructions myself because they flood into my ears and eyes every day. And I make absolutely no moral or educational judgments about others who use they or their as singular pronouns. For some of us it’s simply a matter of semantics, or logical consistency. They and their are clearly plural pronouns, in spite of the fact that most people speak as though they can be used as singular or plural. I know that Webster’s claims that, since English “lacks a common-gender third person singular pronoun that can be used to refer to indefinite pronouns,” we are free to “use which form you think sounds best.” This explanation, however, ignores the fact that the definition offered up front is a pronoun that is plural in construction. It’s secondary meaning, in fact, is PEOPLE.

The fact that Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austin and many others have used they as a singular pronoun certainly provides precedent for others using it in a similar way, guilt free. That does not, however, make its use logical, anymore than the word ones makes sense. Think about that one. The very definition of the word defies its pluralness (new word there). The often heard construction these ones, as in, “I’ll take these ones.”) is absurd—not to mention redundant. Right? And yet we hear journalists, politicians, doctors and writers using it regularly. Fine. It’s convenient. It gets the job done. But, I think it’s a crutch; it allows us to quickly construct sentences which could be better—and clearer—with just a bit more thought. But, hey, everybody else is doing it, so….

You wrote, “’My family stops by regularly and it always brings pizzas’ sounds absurd.” Well, it does sound absurd—because we are so accustomed to hearing they in place of it. But logically it makes perfect sense. A family is a single unit, just like a football team, which also can be referred to as it. “The Colts organization is on a win streak; however, it better be careful not to get cocky.” Of course, if you want to use the plural, fine. We have a plural form: “The Colts team members are on a win streak; however, they better be careful not to get cocky.” Thus there is no need to force a new kind of pluralness onto their singular forms.

“Since everybody can be semantically plural, we know that there’s nothing wrong with using they with it” you wrote. Well, in terms of usage which is widespread, no, there’s nothing wrong with it. I do hope, however, that you are willing to concede that semantically (logically, remember) everybody is clearly singular. Again, we have a plural form for it: all. So, logically if we want to refer to groups of people, it’s clearer to say, “Everybody should make her best effort on Friday.” He, of course, can be used as well; but, if you want to suggest that it’s not just one person (or body) that should make the effort, it’s more logically consistent to say, “All of the members should make their best effort,” OR, “All of the associates should do their best.”

I know: You’ll say this sounds awkward. Sure, it does BECAUSE WE HAVE BECOME USED TO the illogical constructions which mix singular and plural pronouns and antecedents.

You wrote: “Since (2a, They know each other.) is a grammatical sentence, we know that everybody can be semantically plural.” No, everybody is singular. They is plural. I’m sorry, but semantics has to do with “the logical aspects of meaning” (Webster’s). And since Webster’s defines they as a plural pronoun referring to people, it is simply not logical to say that they can be considered singular.

NOTE from the Apple Dictionary: “Everybody, along with everyone, traditionally has been used a singular pronoun of reference. Thus, Everybody must sign his own name. Because the use of his in this context is now perceived as sexist by some, a second option became popular: everybody must sign his or her own name. But : his or her is often awkward, and many feel that the plural simply makes more sense: : everybody must sign their own name.”

And here is my problem with “singular THEY,” because it is really only a reflection of the politically correct environment brought about by critical linguistic and feminist theory. I have no problem with the beautiful evolution of language; I do find it unfortunate that political considerations force changes that are grammatically awkward and illogical.

Perhaps it’s time to come up with a third person singular pronoun that is gender neutral, something like herm. With frequent usage, even this odd sounding term would soon seem like a comfortable old friend. I used to offer my students extra credit for suggestions.

Look, I would love to discuss this further, but I have to get dinner ready. Let me know what you think, and thanks again for your insigthful and thought-provoking article. Very informative and interesting. You put a lot of time and thought into it, and it should be more widely read.

Christopher T.

March 7, 2010 at 11:33 am

Gabe

Jennie: Nope. It’s claimed that “the reason why” is redundant and therefore should be avoided, but that is a stupid reason, given the general redundancy of language.

Jason/Daniel/John/others: If you don’t mind some incoherent mumblings, I think the problem with “it” for humans is not a matter of gender, but rather of humanness. Humanness is a core part of grammar cross-linguistically. The Animacy Hierarchy separates human animates from non-human animates, and that’s based on the distinctions in a variety of languages. In languages like French or Spanish where “it” and “he”/”she” have the same form, I’d guess that you’re thinking more of inanimates being promoted to animate status than animates being relegated to “it” status. Unfortunately, using “it” for humans in English only relegates, never promotes, and I think that’s where the sense of weak revulsion comes from.

Christopher: I disagree with your claim that “everybody” is semantically singular. “Everybody” picks out a set of people, just like “all the people” does. Hence sentence (2a)’s grammaticality. I don’t understand your objection to that point; “everybody” could be argued to be syntactically singular, but I don’t see it being semantically singular.

And, quite simply, the Apple Dictionary is mistaken. You yourself note that singular “they” has been in use for centuries. It’s not some recent feminist ploy. Even if it were, why would that matter? You say that it’s grammatically awkward and illogical, but I don’t see how trying to add a new word like “herm” to the language is any less so.

March 7, 2010 at 4:34 pm

goofy

The Apple Dictionary in Mac OS X is the New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition.

And Christopher only quoted part of the usage note. It continues:

“Although this violates what many consider standard, it is in fact standard in British English and increasingly so in U.S. English. In some sentences, only ‘they’ makes grammatical sense: ‘everybody agreed to convict the defendant, and they voted unanimously.'”

March 7, 2010 at 9:26 pm

Daniel

Christopher, with all due respect, your post is basically nothing more than reheated ipsedixitism. The vast majority of your argument rests on the unproven assertion “They and their are clearly plural pronouns, in spite of the fact that most people speak as though they can be used as singular or plural”. You can rail against the “logical inconsistency” of it all you want, but if most native speakers of English use it that way, and if (as you concede) some of the best writers in the English language use it that way and have done so for over 600 years, then Occam’s Razor would suggest that the most likely explanation for this is that the word can in fact be used as singular or plural. Yes, you may find a dictionary or two that say otherwise. So what? Dictionaries are not references which have descended to earth from on high; they are the works of imperfect people and may contain mistakes. If you have millions and millions of English speakers on one side of the issue and a handful of dictionaries on the other, there is no reason to assume that the millions and millions must be wrong.

The same is true of your claim that “ones” does not make sense because “the very definition of the word defies its pluralness”. “Ones” is in common use. In particular, you will often hear children called “little ones”. What, precisely, is nonsensical about this? “Little one” is used to mean a single child; to make that plural, you add “-s” to the end. As for the definition “defying” pluralness, you might as well say that “I got a 98 on my chemistry test” is incorrect, because the very definition of “ninety-eight” defies singularness.

I could go on and on — questioning your claim that one is “forcing a new kind of pluralness” on collective nouns such as “family” when we use them as the antecedent to “they”, or that “everybody” is “clearly singular” from a “semantic (logical, remember)” standpoint, or that singular “they” is “really only a reflection of the politically correct environment brought about by critical linguistic and feminist theory”. But in every case the point remains the same: you said it, but you didn’t provide any convincing evidence in support of the claims (in the last instance, I’m not sure that it would even be possible to provide convincing evidence to support the notion that feminist theory was a powerful linguistic force in the 1390s). You are of course free to speak however you wish. But if you wish to make serial assertions that the way most native speakers speak (and our greatest writers wrote) is somehow wrong, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than you have so far done in supporting your claims.

March 8, 2010 at 9:26 pm

Christopher

Daniel: You wrote: “Yes, you may find a dictionary or two that say otherwise.” A “dictionary or two”? Are you serious? They ALL define THEY primarily as plural (usually with a carrot tossed to the changing times). What really concerns me here, though, is your casual willingness to discount dictionaries as any kind of authority on language usage. So, for you it’s the “people” who determine usage, without reference to anything else? Well, yours is a very egalitarian, populist view of language. OK, I respect that view. Personally, I prefer a higher standard.

And then to say that “dictionaries make mistakes”! Are you such a populist that you are willing to say that virtually all the English dictionaries ever written were just wrong when they defined THEY as a plural pronoun? Are they also wrong when they label HE, SHE, and IT, as singular? Again, why not just forget all the rules and conventions. Why should English teachers ever again teach Grammar when they could simply let the grammar just flow naturally from their students’ imaginations? (I know, there are English teachers today who basically do just that.)

Speaking of which, you also wrote: “…(as you concede) some of the best writers in the English language use it that way and have done so for over 600 years.” Well, yes, you can find lots of examples of great writers using the singular THEY, but why do you ignore all of the examples of great writers using THEY exclusively as a plural pronoun? Writers of fiction, like poets, take artistic license in the writing, as you know, so perhaps it’s wise for us to also look at the writings of academics and other learned writers who so often observe the logical pairing of singular pronouns with singular antecedents, not plural. They do this, of course, to make their writing more concise and more clear (to avoid confusion).

In short, I think you’re cherry-picking a bit; you’re referencing a lot of exceptions and ignoring the numerous instances of “following the rule,” as it were.

Now, how is my assertion simply an assertion made but not proved? I have at least attempt to prove my point by referring to authoritative sources (dictionaries, writers, and I could even include a lot of grammar texts), but you turn around and say they don’t count. What can I do? What is YOUR proof, simply the fact that people are using a plural pronoun in the singular? So, numbers make it logical? Numbers do make it “correct” or “standard,” yes, but logical? I don’t think so.

I don’t like to say this kind of thing normally, but it seems to me that iif either of us is guilty of ipsedixitism, it’s you. I have made an assertion and backed it up with authoritative sources (and by the way, it’s more than just a dictionary or two). Can you not prove it to yourself? Why do you keep defending the indefensible?

I remind you: I’ve have never asserted, nor have I ever implied, that the “singular THEY” is incorrect, or non-Standard. In fact, I have clearly conceded this on several previous responses.

My only point is the logical inconsistency involved in pairing a singular pronoun (such as EVERYBODY, or EACH with a plural one (THEY). I’m dumbfounded that none of the responses I have received on this topic have even mentioned the logical aspect. (By the way, notice that, as I have admitted before, I just used the singular they in the previous sentence; I’ve never claimed it’s bad, or that I don’t use it. I only submit to you that it isn’t quite LOGICAL.)

Yes, the singular THEY is increasingly Standard in America, but does this fact make it logical, or even sensible? If so, why do we have different pronouns? Why not just use one that cover every possible situation? When we already have a fine plural pronoun, ALL, why not simply alter the syntax a bit: Instead of, “Every one of the team members did their best to win the trophy,” simply write, “ALL of the team members did their best to win the trophy.” Why not encourage students to use the vocabulary we already have at our disposal, instead of perennially rationalizing illogical constructions?

NOTE: Yes, I’m aware that most dictionaries today add this new usage as acceptable. But still, the first definition—the one that prevailed for a long time, is a MAN. [I know that since about the 1970’s dictionaries became very much dedicated to reflecting common usage, rather than pushing Standard English (which considered the way educated people use the language. Today our references text have everything in them; no longer is Standard English promoted.]

Another illogical word in popular use today is GUY, as when a waiter addresses a married couple in a restaurant with, “Well, can I get you GUYS a delicious dessert before you leave?” I submit to you that this now familiar use of GUY, as a gender-neutral pronoun addressing both males and females, is another little illogicality (new word there) brought about by the over-reaction of some in the Feminist movement. It’s fine; I understand the purpose and am comfortable with it. But, my goodness—is it logical?

In any event, and to be brief, I still would like to know what no one is addressing the issue of the logical aspect to using singular pronouns with plural antecedents. When I can freely concede that the singular THEY is “correct,” because it is so widely used, why can others not concede that it is just a tad illogical?

Come on Daniel; LITTLE ONE’S employs the use of a COMMA (as when we speak of paper money: ONE’S, FIVE’S, TEN’S, TWENTY’S). Please. I think you know what I’m getting at. When people say, “These are the ONES I think I’ll buy,” it is first of all redundant (sort of like, “Where is Bob at?” Or do you defend this construction, too?

You’re right: “Ones” is in common use. So, that makes it sensible? Logical? I think not. ONES, without a comma to show that it is a special use of the word, is absurd. ONE = 1, a single entity. There is no logical use of ONES, and if every single person in the English speaking world uses it, it still isn’t logical. You know what it is? Convenient. It’s very convenient, and because it is so convenient, we all use it. And thus it sounds “right’ to us; however, it’s rather silly, certainly illogical.

You assert that to write, “I got a 98 on my chemistry test” is incorrect, because the very definition of “ninety-eight” defies singularness. Daniel, please! The number 98 is a single entity; it’s a single score. It does not, in this instance refer to 98 things, as in “Ninety-eight people (plural) showed up for the rally.” Do you see the difference? The first example (yours) is a score (not scores)—a single entity/score. In my example, 98 refers to 98 entities/people.

Daniel: I mis-spoke when I wrote that THEY is “really only a reflection of the politically correct environment brought about by critical linguistic and feminist theory”. I definitely did not mean to say that it is ONLY a result of linguistic and feminist theory. Clearly, there are other factors, including simply laziness—using the singular THEY is sometimes just easier, and we’re all so used to it that it just comes naturally. However, there is no doubt that linguistic and feminist criticism helped push the use of the singular THEY, as well a other such gender-neutral terms as GUYS (referring to males and females). Several feminist writers made a big issue of this in the 1970’s.

You wrote that,, “if you wish to make serial assertions that the way most native speakers speak (and our greatest writers wrote) is somehow wrong, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than you have so far done in supporting your claims.” Again, I HAVE NOT MADE THE CLAIM THAT THE WAY MOST NATIVE SPEAKERS SPEAK (AND OUR GREATEST WRITERS WROTE) IS SOMEHOW WRONG. I’m afraid you’re making this leap. I’ve have tried very hard to make it clear that I’m not talking about WRONG or INCORRECT.

You seem to be inferring wrongness from my claim that certain grammatical constructions are simply NOT LOGICAL. This isn’t the same as WRONG, at least not in my view. I say, “Hi, guys!” to my students all the time, not sensing there’s anything wrong with it. (Although I know that it is a rather silly construction, when looked at logically—that is, when keeping in mind the definition of the word GUY.)

It looks as though I’ll probably never be able to support my ideas well enough to affect your thinking. I get the impression you are somewhat angered, especially when you start off with, “Christopher, with all due respect, your post is basically nothing more than reheated ipsedixitism.”

I’m so sorry if you are in fact angry or frustrated, or think that I’m some type of anal retentive fool who is a slave to grammar rules and to TRADITION. I’m not really; nevertheless, I love clarity in language, and I simply love LOGIC. I’m not angry that language is changing; I’m fascinated by it, and I love sharing thoughts with people about it.

Thanks, Daniel, for sharing your thoughts with me. I will think about what you have written.

Take care,

Christopher T.

March 8, 2010 at 10:21 pm

goofy

Christopher, I think Gabe does address the issue of logic in his post. There is no logical reason why a word, like “everybody”, can’t be syntactically singular and semantically plural. And the relationship between “they” and it’s antecedent isn’t really a pronoun relationship anyway.

Something that I think is worth saying is that language does not adhere to formal logic, and I don’t know if there’s any reason why we should expect it to.

March 8, 2010 at 11:25 pm

Gabe

Christopher: I see your distinction between illogic and ungrammaticality, and I think you’re totally right to separate the two. Like goofy, though, I view the question of whether a given word or construction is “logical” to be ill-formed. Language doesn’t adhere to mathematical logic; that’s not to say that there is no logic whatsoever to language, but rather that its logic behaves differently. For instance, I don’t find there to be anything illogical about “ones”. I’ll grant it’s sort of strange that you can pluralize the singular, but it makes perfect sense; after all, you can pluralize any number, and “one” is a number. That’s the way logic works in language; “one” can have multiple meanings, and sometimes those meanings can weakly conflict. This doesn’t really happen in mathematical logic.

That said, I still don’t see why “everybody” is semantically singular to you; given that it picks out a set, I would think it is semantically plural. Again, it is syntactically singular (perhaps), but syntax and semantics don’t always line up.

As for a few of your other points, “ones”, even as in dollar bills, doesn’t take an apostrophe usually — there’re more hits for it without the apostrophe than with on Google. “These are the ones I’ll buy” isn’t redundant; removing “ones” leaves you with the ill-formed “These are (the) I’ll buy”, which is obviously nonsense. “I’ll buy these” is shorter, but it shifts the sentence’s focus and thereby changes the pragmatics of the sentence. And “guy” definitely isn’t a result of the feminist movement; I have met some feminists who strongly object to the unisex usage of “guy”.

March 9, 2010 at 12:30 am

Christopher

Gabe:

Thanks ever so much for your quick and yet thoughtful response. I really appreciate your taking the time to get back to me, especially about specifics.

Dictionary Blues:

Well, you don’t agree with Apple dictionary, “so it must be wrong.” Perhaps. How, then, about Webster’s which defines it much the same: “THEY, a pronoun, plural in construction. Used as third person pronoun serving as the plural of he, she, or it, or referring to a group of two or more individuals……” Now, just like the Apple dictionary, Webster’s goes on to address the objections to the use of they as a singular noun, pointing, as you have, that the singular they has a long pedigree.

In other words, it’s really plural, but all kinds of people, including famous authors, find it convenient to use it as a singular pronoun. (It’s only fair to add, of course, that many, many writers and scholars disdain its use as a singular pronoun and re-write their sentences accordingly. I’m sure you’re well aware of this fact.)

Again, I have long conceded that the singular they is “correct” in that it is used so widely and has been for quite awhile now. That I still concede. Are you not willing, then, to concede simply that the singular use of they is not really logical? This is all I’m asserting, that’s given it’s very definition, it’s a bit odd calling a word defined as plural singular. It’s a bit like the phrase these ones which also is rather odd, if not illogical on its face. Isn’t it?

All Aboard!

Well, to address EVERYBODY: I thought this one was going to be fairly easy. I mean, the word contains BODY, a singular noun for sure (we have a plural form of it, after all—BODIES). And every, which is defined by Webster’s as “EACH,” clearly is also single. Unfortunately, we all heard EVERYBODY used as a plural for so long we’ve forgotten that the plural is really ALL. Now, through usage a people can decide that singular is plural, or plural is singular, I suppose. Likewise we can all decide, as apparently we have, that 9 is the new 10.

Did you notice all the hype about the “end of the ones” as they called it, meaning the “end of the first decade of the 21st century.” There were several TV specials, plus magazine and newspaper articles touting the “Biggest Heroes of the decade,” the “Best Athletes of the first decade of this century,” etc. However, a decade, after all, is a period of 10 years, 1-10, and thus far we have completed only 9 years; we are two months into the tenth year, but we have still 10 months to go before the decade (10 year period) is complete.

Of course, we celebrate birthdays AFTER completing the year, so when you’re 50 you have actually lived a full 50 years. New Years celebrations, however, welcome in the New Year. Thus in 2000 we should have been celebrating the start of the year 2000, which is the last year of the second millennium (not the first year of the third millennium). This past Jan. 1, 2010 marked the START of 2010 (the 10 being the last year of the first decade of this new century—the START of the last year of the century). And as I said earlier, some amazing athletic feats—not to mention heroic Sully-like feats—are yet to be witnessed in this final year of the decade; unfortunately, all of the “experts” are going to label them as acts of the second decade of the century.

“So what?” you might ask. Is it that big a deal. Well, frankly, in and of itself, NO. And it doesn’t keep awake at night. I certainly don’t think less of anyone for assuming that 2010 is the start of a new decade rather than the final year of a decade. I didn’t think any less of all of those who believed that New Year’s Day 2000 marked the beginning of a new century.

Slippery Slope:

My only point is that we, as a society, seem to have arrived at a point where little things in our speech and even in our math computations suggest we are getting a little sloppy—perhaps a bit feeble-minded. That’s all. Plural pronouns can be singular, if we want them to be; punctuation can just be considered optional (look at the average e-mail or text message today); numbers aren’t to be taken so seriously, if we don’t want to. And certainly, the points I raise illustrate that we Americans today are a little less interested in logic and a great deal more concerned with our selves, and our passions.

By they way, I think a pretty strong case can be made that Feminist criticism, along with criticism from the academic left—especially from the linguistics community, helped create this little phenomena we conveniently refer to as political correctness. I’ve read Steinem, Himmelfarb, Friedan, and a few others. And I agree with much of their ideas and goals, one of which was, as Wikipedia puts it, to create a “Gender-neutral language…..aimed at minimizing assumptions regarding the biological sex of human referents” (also referred to as gender-inclusive language). Clearly, their well-intended efforts have, especially since the 1970’s, increased the use of singular THEY, as well as altering other uses of the language.

Yes, the practice of using THEY in the singular was around when I was a kid, but I remember quite clearly that grammar teachers back in the ’50’s and ’60’s still were pretty insistent that we pay attention to the singularity/plurality of our pronouns, and I am sure that the degree of neglect of such detail increased dramatically in the ’70’s and beyond. To the point that today we commonly hear such utterances such as, “I want every single person here to do the very best THEY can!” Talk about loaded! Three consecutive singular words, especially SINGLE and PERSON, and still a non-committal THEY in the end. Amazing. Truly, we are trying very hard to avoid even the appearance of favoring the masculine.

Easy Fix:

You know, it’s just so easy to change syntax a bit and avoid the whole issue. For example, instead of saying, “I want every single person here to do the very best THEY can,” simply say, “I want ALL of you here to do the very best YOU can!” Or, “I want every single person here to do the very best SHE can!” Instead of writing, “Someone lost THEIR purse in the parking lot,” why not simply write, “Someone lost a purse in the parking lot.” It’s just as brief, and it avoids confusion since it may well be that “THEIR purse” is not “Someone’s.” There are even more egregious examples of this that I hear frequently on the news, and in public places, but even in this example it really is possible that the someone in question was not the original owner of the purse.

In Conclusion:

I’m not disputing “correctness,” not even “political correctness.” My concern is the LOGIC of the thing. EVERYBODY, by definition is singular; THEY, by definition, is plural. I know that usage is important, but is it all-sufficient, or does logic matter anymore?

Look, I know this has gotten too long, but you raise good points. I have always made it a practice to pay attention to the details in others’ writing and speaking. Please let me know if in the future you would appreciate my keeping my responses shorter; I can discipline myself to do so when I know my listener appreciates it.

And thanks again for your thoughtful and timely responses. You’re quite gifted.

Christopher T.

March 9, 2010 at 12:21 pm

Christopher

Gabe:

Well, apparently the reason we disagree on EVERYBODY is because we look to different sources. From your point of view, it makes perfect sense to refer to a Google search to support your assertion. OK, that makes sense—from your point of view. For me, grammar texts and dictionaries carry more weight. Language is tricky enough without it changing too much too quickly; I like certain basic things to remain constant, like having pronouns remain singular or plural.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE:

For me, “EVERYBODY on the team did THEIR best to win” creates a certain amount of cognitive dissonance, seeing that singular pronoun EVERYBODY (and no, I am not convinced of the syntax/semantics divide), while on the other side of the sentence sits that plural THEIR. And just because nearly everybody is today using THEIR as a singular pronoun doesn’t make it singular. The old “everybody’s doing it” doesn’t work, unless you accept the premise that correctness in language usage is determined purely by its use among most users. I recognize that this is a popular view today (and I am aware that there are, among other influences, sociological and political reasons for this view), but I still prefer the idea of aspiring to a higher level of speaking and writing.

TURN-A-ROUND:

Let’s reverse the situation. You have no problem with using THEY and THEIR as singular pronouns. OK. Well, let’s reverse it: You might as well say, “ALL of the team members did HIS best to win.” Here we have the reverse of your example, with the plural on the left and the singular (HIS) on the right. Sounds rather ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, it is absurd because it is illogical. However, if this construction were to become common, you would surely argue that it is semantically correct. Before long, it would cease to look or sound awkward. For you, apparently, widespread usage determines semantic correctness. I understand that, though I just don’t like it.

So, I’ll try to write or say either, “EVERYBODY on the team did HIS best to win,” OR “EVERYBODY on the team gave 100%,” OR “ALL team members did THEIR best to win.” To me, each of these is more concise and more clear. They are more clear because in each case the structural integrity is reinforced, rather than contradicted. SINGULAR—SINGULAR, or PLURAL—PLURAL. The syntactical structure is reinforced by the semantic meaning. No cognitive dissonance.

MY TURN-A-ROUND:

By the way, until about fifteen years ago I would have agreed that EVERYBODY and EVERYONE are plural. All my life I used them that way, without giving it a thought. I even taught it that way, until one day a student, in front of the whole class, challenged me. While analyzing a sentence similar to the one in question, he pointed out that EVERYONE is made up of two words, both singular (he claimed he looked them up the previous night while doing his grammar assignment). Instinctively I started to correct him, but just then I looked at the word—really looked at it. He had a point. But, I was too insecure at that time to admit that he had a point, so I changed the subject and moved on.

That night I thought about it and eventually realized he was right. What I was trying to say in the sentence was the all of the students had turned in their separate assignments (the original sentence in question was, “Everyone of the students turned in their grammar assignments on time.” I was obviously trying to subliminally get them to be punctual with their homework!)

Anyway, it was about two days later that I brought the incident up again in class, apologizing to the student and adding, “You know, what I was trying to say in that sentence was, “ALL the students turned in THEIR grammar assignments on time.” Why not just use ALL? I was, after all, trying to indicate that they ALL turned the assignments in, but I had virtually forgotten about that handy little pronoun, ALL. And today, just about everybody is using EVERYBODY and EVERYONE for the plural when they already have a pronoun for that purpose: ALL.

I say, leave the pronoun numbers alone; they work very well. We have singular and plural pronouns for a reason, and just because as a society we have gotten a bit sloppy with it all is not reason enough to rationalize our way around the obvious: Pronouns aren’t, as it were, bisexual. They are either singular or plural, always.

You wrote, “I’ll grant it’s sort of strange that you can pluralize the singular, but it makes perfect sense; after all, you can pluralize any number, and “one” is a number. That’s the way logic works in language; “one” can have multiple meanings, and sometimes those meanings can weakly conflict. This doesn’t really happen in mathematical logic.”

Well, yes, you can pluralize numbers, but you know that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re not discussing some widespread use of numbers in the plural that lack commas! It’s the sloppy and redundant constructions such as, “These are the ONES I want to buy.” It seems to me that “I’ll buy these” is very clear, and very concise. It’s the kind of clear, simple, concise writing I would encourage my students to strive for.

You wrote, “I’ll buy these” is shorter, but it shifts the sentence’s focus and thereby changes the pragmatics of the sentence.” What? I’m sorry, but you lost me on this one, Gabe. The “pragmatics of the sentence”? Hmmm….

THAT FEMINIST GUY:

Yes, there are feminists who reject the gender-neutral stuff (Christine Hoff Summers, for one). Nevertheless, many feminists strongly pushed this tenet of feminist social criticism. I was there at the time, and I saw how grammar texts and dictionaries changed in the ’70’s and ’80’s to reflect a growing social consciousness about the favored status of males in our language. Many prominent feminists lobbied the MLA and other organizations; others spoke out prominently about the need for gender-neutral terms.

And I understand what they were advocating for; it made sense. I never was comfortable with the old convention on pronoun usage that said, “When the sex is unknown, use the masculine.” That’s why very early on (in the early ’80’s?) I started alternating masculine and feminine (that is, until I realize there are better ways to alter syntax, as cited above).

Well, here we are again, communicating civilly and comprehensively on one tiny topic, each with his own very different perspective. But you know, Gabe, I think language, like so many other topics/issues, is to complex and subtle that there is plenty of room for differences. I really do respect your view, and very much appreciate your taking the time to write up these thoughtful responses to very specific questions and challenges.

Bravo, Gabe. Thanks so much!

Christopher T.

March 9, 2010 at 9:23 pm

Daniel

Christopher,

Before I being, let me simply say that, no, I am not angry or frustrated. I can see how a sentence like “your post is basically nothing more than reheated ipsedixitism” might give that impression,but in all honesty one of the main reasons I said that is that “ipsedixitism” is a fun word.

With that out of the way, let us begin with the issue of “they”. And let us start this discussion by me pointing out what I actually said, which you seem to have misunderstood. I never said that “they” is not primarily plural and that you may find a few dictionaries that say otherwise. I said that “they” can be used as singular or plural and that you may find a few dictionaries that say otherwise.

You say that I cherry-pick, that I “ignore all of the examples of great writers using THEY exclusively as a plural pronoun.” I may (and let me emphasize the word “may”) be doing so. But if I am, there are two very good reasons:

1. No one has actually mentioned a single great author who did/does this. I can only be ignoring them if they actually exist, and so far no one has provided any examples.

2. Assuming for the moment that they do exist, they don’t undermine my argument at all. I am not claiming that “they” can not be used as a plural, nor even that it isn’t more often used as a plural. I am claiming that it can be used as either plural or singular. The fact that I can point to great authors who do use it both ways is all the support I need for my claim. The presence of authors who don’t use “they” as a singular may not support my claim, but it doesn’t undermine it, either. In short, their presence is irrelevant to my claim, and therefore I see no compelling reason to discuss them.

Now, regarding my accusation of ipsedixitism on your part: I concede that you did bring up dictionaries regarding your claim that using “they” as a singular is illogical and your claim that “everybody” is singular. But there are numerous other claims you made where you did not provide any evidence:

1. The word “ones” is illogical.

2. The construction “these ones” is absurd.

3. “All” is the plural of “everybody”. (This one is particularly puzzling to me, since “all” is another word that can be singular or plural. Consider the sentence “All is lost”, for example.)

4. Use of singular they is only a result of the politicall correct environment. (You have since retracted this point and I won’t expect you to defend it or hold it against you, but I list it here because at the time I made my accusation of ipsedixitism you had not yet retracted it and I feel it is therefore reasonable to mention is as an example of what I was talking abou when I made that accusation.)

So let me modify my original statement: Rather than saying your post was nothing more than reheated ipsedixitism, I should say that there was a lot of reheated ipsedixitism in it.

Now, to get to the main point you are trying to make, which (if I understand you correctly) is that use of “everybody” as a plural, “they” as a singular, or the word “ones” is illogical: I simply do not see it.

Your argument regarding singular “they” being illogical seems to be that its primary use is plural. This does not render singular “they” illogical any more than objective “her” renders possessive “her” illogical, or any more than plural -s renders third-person-singular-present-tense -s as illogical (or, for that matter, the identically-pronounced, possessive -‘s as illogical), or any more than “rent” meaning “let you use my stuff if you pay me money” renders “rent” meaning “pay you money if you’ll let me use your stuff” illogical. Simply put, a word can have two different (sometimes even contradictory) uses which are both logical.

Your argument regarding plural “everybody” being illogical seems to be that the presence of plural “all” renders it unecessary. Unnecessary it may be (although even that is debatable; the meaning of “everybody” is not identical to the meaning of “all”), but why does a lack of necessity equal illogic? I simply don’t see the reasoning here.

Your argument regarding “ones” being illogical seems to be that the very definition of “one” involves singularity. However, the whole point of this “-s” suffix is to turn a singular into a plural. Furthermore, “singularities” is a valid and reasonably common word. (I would also comment that I have NEVER seen anyone use an apostrophe to pluralize denominations of bills.)

Finally, I would point out that for all your insistence that you are not calling such usage “wrong”, you do imply it at a few points. First of all, the very use of the word “ilogical” woud imply a value judgment, but I’ll let that slide. The fact is you have said things that do very strongly imply that you see something wrong with the constructions you call illogical.

Here’s an example: “Instead of, ‘Every one of the team members did their best to win the trophy,’ simply write, ‘ALL of the team members did their best to win the trophy.’ Why not encourage students to use the vocabulary we already have at our disposal, instead of perennially rationalizing illogical constructions?” So let me see if I have this straight: You’re not saying the construction is wrong, but you are saying we should encourage students not to use it. That is a contradiction. You are clearly saying there is a different approach which is better; how could it be better unless there is something wrong with the construction you are saying should not be encouraged? You may not be saying that it is terrible usage, but you do appear to be saying that it is inferior to the constructions you call logical.

March 10, 2010 at 12:01 pm

Christopher

Daniel:

Wow, you’re really into this stuff! To me this whole thing was just a passing interest, but then I got sucked up into it. Whew!

Well, I appreciate your careful analysis and attention to specifics. I don’t want to continue this indefinitely; it’s just that big a deal to me. So let me be succinct:

1. Starting with your last point: WRONG is not the same as WEAKER, or not as good. ILLOGICAL really is not a value judgment to me in terms of “right” or “wrong.” It is, rather, the result of what appears to be logically contradictory on its face. (I don’t get very deep on this.) To me something can appear illogical and yet be perfectly comfortable and wonderful—like my cat.

Some constructions, however, are better than others, I think. Don’t you believe that some constructions are better than others? You almost seem to be arguing for some kind of democratization of language, and given the mottoes on the Motivated Grammar site (which I noticed Sunday night) it’s no wonder. I always tried to suggest to my students better constructions for their writing, better generally meaning tighter, more concise, clearer, more detailed.

Look: I love Classical music and Jazz, but some Classical, particularly much Baroque and even some from the “Classical” period per se I don’t really connect with. For example, I prefer Chopin to Haydn. And yet I have nothing but respect for Haydn, and even Baroque music. I love fusion Jazz (Spryo Gyro, for instance) but not straight-ahead traditional Jazz. Nevertheless, I greatly respect and appreciate the incredible history of traditional jazz and the musical groundbreaking engendered within that style.

Maybe I’m strange, but to me calling certain grammatical constructions ILLOGICAL is not the same as calling them INCORRECT. I don’t prefer Bach, but I respect him; I don’t prefer constructions such as “Everybody did their best,” but I have no problem using them. For me, logic with regard to language is simply a matter of looking at the words as they appear before me. I don’t have your deep academic analytical outlook or expertise. I simply look at a word like ONES and think, “How odd that looks; a word that by definition means one thing (singular) is pluralized. How strange. The only way it at all bothers me in usage is when it is overused or redundant, as in, “These ONES are the shoes I want.” I would encourage students to write, “I like these” instead because it is more concise and clearer.

By the way, my printed Webster’s doesn’t have a listing for ONES. My on-screen Oxford does mention ONES, as in, “Remember your loved ONES,” a perfectly useful and common utterance, to be sure. But, in the same on-screen dictionary there are dozens of examples of ONE’S (yes, with an apostrophe) and very few examples without an apostrophe.

On the Science channel last I heard Steven Hawking and other fine astronomers using expressions such as the following routinely: “An observer standing near the entrance to a black hole would risk their life in the process.” OK, it’s common, and we all use it. I still think that, on the surface, it is illogical given the commonly understood definition of THEIR as plural here teamed up with a singular subject.

But here is my only concern: Later in the broadcast one of the narrators, talking about an observer seeing another person standing at the entrance to a black hole, said, “An outside observer would see the individual [near the entrance] apparently dissolving into nothingness, but that INDIVIDUAL THEMSELVES would see and feel nothing.” Now, this kind of construction is fairly common these days, and if you don’t even have a problem with this one, then we have nothing more to discuss. You can rationalize to your heart’s delight and analyze it to death (though admittedly most people today wouldn’t even notice it), but grammatically it is definitely illogical in my book. “THESE ONES” strikes me as absurd, but I’m used to it and have used myself I’m sure. But, “INDIVIDUAL THEMSELVES!” Come on, Daniel, that one has to bring at least a small smile or a grimace to your face….

This is all I mean by ILLOGICAL. I’m not deeply analyzing it, and it doesn’t make my teeth hurt or anything. Yes, I would encourage my students to avoid such a construction, but I don’t judge people who use it as illiterate or sub-standard or whatever because I recognize how common it is and how its use has come about.

2. By the way, I never had a problem with ipsedixitism. In fact, I used it myself in my response to you (in a different form). No, the thing that gave me the impression you might harbor some heightened level of frustration or anger was the words before ipsedixitism: “nothing more than reheated…” “Nothing more than” certainly suggests an attempt to dismiss or minimize my thoughts, as does “reheated.” But, not to worry; I understand.

3. “All is lost” is fine, but remember, in this construction ALL is HOPE. Hope is lost. Nevertheless, I’m simply suggesting that a sentence like “Everybody on the team tried THEIR best to win the game” is more concise—and grammatically tighter when written “ALL of them gave 100% to win the game” or, if it’s a women’s volleyball team, “Everybody on the team tried HER best to win the game.” But the first construction, while not as logical in my reckoning, is still OK. I don’t think it is a clear of concise—and I believe the inconsistent use of pronoun number is illogical, but it is acceptable. I’m sorry if you think that means I’m being inconsistent, that I’m judging the first construction as somehow unacceptable, or primitive. I simply think it isn’t quite as good as the others.

4. I thought I addressed the Political Correctness thing already, but here we go again. You wrote, “Use of singular they is only a result of the politicall correct environment.” However, I don’t believe this to be true, and I have said so. One time I was not as clear as I should have been, and I have addressed that.

Yes, many factors have contributed to some of the grammatical changes in our languages in recent decades. I think it’s fairly obvious, as Shashura and others elsewhere have pointed out, that several writers in the Feminist movement have influenced the culture in its use of language. Betty Friedan and others have stated very plainly that they hoped to raise public consciousness about the subliminal effect language has on human thinking. Many linguists devote their work to not only studying but on influencing society’s use of language. And I believe their motives are sincere; often their work has had, I believe, a positive impact on American society.

When we see a marked increase in the use of the kinds of construction we have been analyzing here, including such utterances as, “Every single member of the girls’ softball team contributed their time to the public event,” or “…but the individual themselves sees and feels nothing,” I think it is clear that we trying very hard to avoid that old “rule” about”using the masculine pronoun when the gender is unknown.” In the volleyball example just given, the gender is not in doubt. And perhaps you can come up with some convoluted and creative way of justifying it. OK, but to me, on the surface, if just seems lacking. It could be clearer and more concise. The second example, “individual themselves,” is really pushing it. It suggests, to me, that as a society, we are really trying hard to avoid mentioning males more than females. Which is fine; I’m with that movement. I just think there are better ways of addressing the issue, as I have tried to demonstrate above.

Well, I must make some lunch now. I have really enjoyed our jousts, Daniel, but we’ve probably said about all we have to say on this topic. What do you think about participial phrases and subordinate CLAUSES? Now that’s the kind of grammar stuff I really get excited about. What to you think?

Thanks for your remarks. Take care,

Christopher T.

March 10, 2010 at 2:15 pm

Christopher

Daniel:

Oops! I see a word was left out in my latest response. The second paragraph, second sentence, second clause should read “it’s just NOT that big a deal to me.” Sorry…

Also, I didn’t address one of your main points, the one about authors who use THEY consistently as a plural pronoun. I don’t have stacks of books readily available to me in digital form, thus I can’t provide comprehensive empirical evidence of authors who ALWAYS use THEY as a plural pronoun, but I certainly challenge you to find many, if any credible, examples from the following short list of authors off the top of my head using THEY consistently—or nearly consistently—as a singular pronoun:

Historians:
J.A.S. Grenville, Paul Johnson, Norman Cantor, and William Bennett

Non-Fiction Writers:
Robert Bork, Al Gore, Thomas Sowell, and so many more…..

Fiction Writers:
Gertrude Stein, Stephen Crane, Jane Austin, Edith Wharton, Washington Irving, Thornton Wilder

Actually there are so many it’s pointless to try and list them all. You might find an occasional instance here or there, perhaps, but they are likely to be in the dialogue (which doesn’t really count), and you will have to ignore all the examples where the author uses THEY as a plural pronoun (which is virtually all the time). I have read so many, many books (hundreds), especially of non-fiction, wherein the authors are quite consistent in their use of THEY as a plural pronoun.

It’s hard to recall otherwise, though I do recall a line from Wilder’s OUR TOWN where the Stage Manager says, “Seems like everybody around here climbs into THEIR graves married.” Yes, he seems to have the character use a singular THEIR, but note that he uses the singular verb form, CLIMBS (apparently recognizing the singular pronoun EVERYBODY. And of course the pronoun THEIR really seems to refer to the GRAVES, not the people. It’s marginal, but generally Wilder uses THEY as a plural pronoun in his works.

Now, that’s my last word. I think we have both said all we can on the subject. I just wanted you to know I hadn’t dismissed one of your important points. And I apologize for the numerous mistakes, type-o’s in my previous posts. (Dyslexia makes proofreading really challenging for me!)

Take care, Daniel….

Christopher T.

March 25, 2010 at 5:51 pm

INTP: What grammatical error makes you want to commit homicide? - Page 6 - PersonalityCafe

[…] is random and off-topic, but… i just found this crazy grammar blog. utterly fascinating and probably slightly […]

March 25, 2010 at 6:26 pm

kangaroo

hi gabe,

i just stumbled across your blog and i already love it. i hope it’s alright that i’m using all lowercase letters–pretty presumptuous of me, i guess, making myself comfortable here and kicking off my shoes like this… (please let me know if it’s obnoxious.)

just a small question about your footnote on *grammaticaster*: is the use of the word “export” deliberate? (i realize that it makes just as much sense as “expert,” but for different reasons.)

April 16, 2010 at 5:04 pm

Nate

@Christopher

“I certainly challenge you to find many, if any credible, examples from the following short list of authors off the top of my head using THEY consistently—or nearly consistently—as a singular pronoun:

…Jane Austin…”

That one’s been done already, thoroughly.

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html

July 13, 2010 at 4:37 am

Louise

What a wonderful blog you have, Gabe. I’ve just discovered it; better late than never, I suppose…

July 30, 2010 at 7:28 pm

Jose M. Blanco

Amazing article. Thank you. You ground your argument in linguistic logic, and the only refutation is pedantry. Well done.

August 23, 2010 at 12:12 pm

Deborah

This is a great post. I linked it on a short post of mine on the same subject. I hope you don’t mind. Deborah

August 25, 2010 at 7:02 am

Sunday Blokland

Has anyone even considered how vous is used in French grammar?
I was taught that vous can be used as singular or plural, when used as an indirect Object Pronoun. I beg to say that they in English is equivalent to vous in French.

October 15, 2010 at 10:45 pm

Burns

Don’t forget that the singular “you” also acts as a plural. “Are you going to the store,” but not “Is you going to the store?”

If that pronoun can ignore number, so can “they.”

November 4, 2010 at 10:05 pm

Singular they IS grammatically accurate « Binary Subverter

[…] least mine, would use he which is fine by me, even if the grammatical excuse pisses me off because it’s not accurate). I think they saw this on-par with not using she for a woman of any kind- but it really […]

November 12, 2010 at 10:30 am

“Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct” via Motivated Grammar « Chroanagram

[…] read the full post here Suppose you were reading and came to the following line: “She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.” Would you … (a) continue reading, because that’s a perfectly acceptable sentence, or (b) throw a tantrum and insist that the author is an imbecile speeding the wholesale destruction of the English language? […]

November 20, 2010 at 7:13 am

Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson

Until Diana Hacker tells me otherwise, I go with non-singular antecedents with indefinite pronouns no matter how weird it may sound; however, I am waiting for the day that we find a change in the MLA update. It does make sense in that “they” is gender non-specific. People misuse this all the time on TV, so why not just make the change. As you say, there is history behind us AND it would just simplify things for boatloads of English teachers across America who are losing this battle daily.

December 15, 2010 at 5:05 pm

Jiz Lee » What is Genderqueer?

[…] out Singular They and the Many Reasons it is Correct. Posted in Gender, […]

January 7, 2011 at 6:11 am

“Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct” « No Gender No Voice

[…] I prefer people to use the singular ‘they’ when referring to me, because it implies nothing about gender and this appeals to me because I dont see why every reference to me in day-to-day interactions has to include a description of my gender as per the status quo of the dominant culture. When I inform people of this the general response is something like “I use ‘they’ when talking about groups of 2 or more people, your request contradicts my understanding of the term, I dont want to feel like Im using an inaccurate term”. The singular ‘they’ is correct, I came across the following post last night which clarifies this extensively: “Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct”. […]

February 13, 2011 at 10:19 pm

Pen to Paper: The Gender Question |

[…] the singular “they,” doubtless because I’ve been taught to despise the singular “they.” This article tells me I’m a horrible prescriptivist and pedant for holding this attitude. That, too, is part […]

February 21, 2011 at 11:17 am

Liluu

I do hate the writing of C. S. Lewis, who was a pompous, misogynistic ass. However, I love the singular “they”.

February 27, 2011 at 3:08 pm

logos

I don’t understand why you feel threatened by people who disagree with you on the usage of pronouns. If you wish to use the singular “they,” bully for you. I, for one, will maintain pronoun-antecedent agreement and use the masculine pronoun when gender remains unestablished. If civility is what you seek, there is no reason to “throw a tantrum” about this.

March 4, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Jim

Get a grip.

Your anti-pedantry has a pedantry all its own.

March 4, 2011 at 1:24 pm

Peter Witte

Thanks for this article, I enjoyed it and will pass on to my friend so that THEY too can enjoy.

March 4, 2011 at 2:26 pm

Tony Powell

Thank you, thank you. I run into this in my fiction all they time and imagine editors throwing my manuscript in the trash if I use a singular they. To know they probably won’t helps a great deal.

March 4, 2011 at 4:36 pm

Happy National Grammar Day! « Novel Inspection

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct (I’m not quite sure that I can get behind this […]

March 4, 2011 at 4:46 pm

Happy National Grammar Day! « MaggieCakes

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct (I’m not quite sure that I can get behind this […]

March 5, 2011 at 1:38 am

I seem to remember from college linguistics that it came up, and had something to do with the principle of proximity. But that’s all I remember.. it was a long time ago.

March 5, 2011 at 4:16 am

The Raven

Oh Gabe.

So like some shuffling zombie emerging from an ill-sanctified crossroads grave, Henry Churchyard’s hoary defense of “singular they” comes back yet again among of the living. Sigh. Here we go again…

Some 20 years ago on alt.usage.english, this topic churned out page after page of the same arguments we see above, with the descriptivists leaning on Churchyard, the prescriptivists clutching Fowler. It wasn’t settled then, and no, it isn’t settled now.

This blog entry isn’t “the last word” on the subject, rather, it’s yet another tantrum in defense of the indefensible. So-called “singular they” is a fault today as much as it was when Thomas Jefferson railed against the English language’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. The problem, such as it is, is embedded in the very DNA of our tongue. Wishing it away don’t make it so.

To be sure, you can deploy the “singular they” in your speech willy-nilly and it will pass without objection. In formal, written usage, however, should you make the attempt you will in your heart know that you’re trying to pull a fast one. Guiltily, you’ll be trying to sneak it past and fervently hope that nobody notices.

Blandly asserting that the lax usage in question is A-OK because Chaucer used it is non-salient. The editorial set, when posed with a thorny construction, do not haul The Canterbury Tales off the shelf to see what Geoffrey had to say on the matter. Vox populi and norma loquendi don’t get a vote on this.

William Safire went down swinging with his credo that “the male embraces the female” in observing that “he/his” could be considered gender neutral, and Christopher above does make a spirited case that the feminist movement of the 70s was largely responsible for killing that usage off. Nevertheless, gender-neutral “he” was ubiquitous through most of the 1800-1900 period.

It’s the later style guides post-1970 that include special sections on the avoidance of “sexist language” that inveigh against “he” and urge “inclusiveness,” but the very fact that they do is evidence that this shift in emphasis is not natural, but political in origin.

The example that leads this blog entry is deucedly clever: “as everybody ought to do…” because “everybody” is one of those slightly blurry terms, like “staff,” “team,” “a number,” and so on that are syntactically singular but notionally flexible, depending on the intended meaning. Such words are often agreeable to plural verbs when intended to encompass the sense of multiple referents. They also are happy to take singular verbs when used to strongly define a group as a whole.

So what if your original sentence had been, “When a boxer enters the ring, they should duck beneath the top rope”? Here, singular they is unhappy. It looks press-ganged into the job. An editor would have to do some work here to find a graceful turn.

Careful writers, people who use language with precision, professional editors, and similar will avoid singular they when possible. Exhortations to the contrary strike me as being, well, like linguistic advice from a group of rum-soaked Jimmy Buffett fans: “oh go ahead, it’s all right – nobody cares – do whatever you want!” And that is a kind of argument.

After all, as a writer, you are free do as you like. You need adhere to no conventions whatsoever. Spell by ear, punctuate at random or not at all. You’re entirely free and nobody can stop you. “Singular they: will still be sloppy usage.

March 5, 2011 at 6:31 am

Deborah

“When a boxer enters the ring, they should duck beneath the top rope”

Easy:

When boxers enter the ring, they should duck beneath the top rope.

Bryan Garner in Garner’s Modern American usage, says:

“Speakers of AmE resist this development (using ‘they’) more than speakers of BrE, in which the indeterminate ‘they’ is already more or less standard. That it sets many literate Americans’ teeth on edge is an unfortunate obstacle to what promises to be the ultimate solution to the problem.”

March 5, 2011 at 10:28 am

Sally Moe

I was raised to be sensitive to this issue. It drove my parents crazy and now it does the same to me. I used to buy the “generic he” explanation, but came to realize how sexist that was, so I don’t use it anymore.

I hate using the “singular they” and try to avoid it by recasting sentences wherever possible. Because let’s be honest: calling “they” singular is a contradiction, and ARs like me just can’t accept that. But if I can’t recast a sentence to avoid such linguistic gaucherie, I bite my lip and look the other way.

March 13, 2011 at 8:47 pm

back in 1896, when women couldn’t vote in the U.S

Actually, in 1896 women could vote in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado

March 14, 2011 at 5:10 pm

fredvonassenhat

“whoever each other refers to has to be plural.”

Shouldn’t that be “whomever?”

I think it should.

The 4 grammar sites I’ve read have pronoun errors in the denunciation of other errors. Denounce away, but be prepared for denunciation.

March 15, 2011 at 8:15 am

Daniel

@The Raven: So typical of prescriptivists: Assertion after assertion after assertion, and not a shred of evidence to be found. Where is the evidence that “careful writers [ . . . ] avoid singular they when possible”? Do you have a list of writers deemed “careful” (presumably a list that omits Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Wilde, and Orwell) and proof that none of these careful writers ever used a singular they? Because in all the years of hearing prescriptivists rant, I’ve never seen anything other than stridency and circular argument in support of their claims. If the argument between prescriptivism and descriptivism has gone on for decades and will continue to do so, it is for the same reason the argument between creationism and evolution has followed this arc: because one side believes in self-appointed experts proclaiming The Truth from on high, the other side believes in actual evidence, and the poor laity lack the requisite understanding to rise above the deliberately-created confusion.

If you can provide actual evidence for your claim — actual proof that there are no careful writers who use singular they — then please do so. But spare us the “logic” that doesn’t even look at the work of celebrated authors and the self-appointed “expertise”.

March 15, 2011 at 8:18 am

Daniel

@ Fredvonassenhat: In fact Gabe has an article about this very question: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/whoever-v-whomever-cases-collide-match-of-the-century/

Summary: Yes, technically it should be “whomever” if you accept the distinction between “who” and “whom”.

March 15, 2011 at 8:37 am

Gabe

logos: You’re conflating my two points. I have a much weaker distaste for people using he gender-neutrally than I do for people insisting that singular they is wrong. The former I disagree with, the latter I lambaste.

The Raven: You wrote “with the descriptivists leaning on Churchyard, the prescriptivists clutching Fowler. It wasn’t settled then, and no, it isn’t settled now.” But first off, it’s not the descriptivists leaning on Churchyard. You can see above that there are five other arguments that have nothing to do with mere usage. Secondly, it’s not a he-said-they-said argument, because the descriptivists are showing evidence that this is standard and the prescriptivists are simply replying that it’s not. One side has evidence and the other has opinions. I agree it’s not settled, but that’s the fault of people refusing to acknowledge evidence that they don’t want to accept.

Furthermore, I don’t understand your claim that they is “unhappy” in “When a boxer enters the ring, they should duck beneath the top rope”. This sentence sounds completely natural to me. If you search Google for the phrase “when a person * they”, you’ll see tons of other examples. It may sound awkward to you, but that doesn’t mean it sounds awkward to everyone.

You also declared that “Careful writers, people who use language with precision, professional editors, and similar will avoid singular they when possible.” But doesn’t Churchyard’s compilation establish that this is simply not the case? You can play with your definition of clever so as to omit the writers he lists, or you can claim that while they were generally careful, they sometimes were temporarily uncareful and let a singular they slip through. But at that point, you’re adjusting your data to fit your conclusion.

Sally Moe: I don’t see the contradiction. You used to be non-singular, and then through varying usage (first as a formal singular, then a general singular) became singular as well as plural. The singular/plural distinction is not as sharp as you’d think.

dw: That is a very good clarification.

fredvonassenhat: I use who and whom interchangeably as the accusative form of who. Whom is leaving the language, and I am perfectly content to accelerate its departure. If you disagree, consider John McIntyre’s assessment of the matter.

March 15, 2011 at 8:38 am

Gabe

Daniel: How did you manage to post exactly what I was going to say while I was composing it? Get out of my head! :)

April 9, 2011 at 6:01 pm

» They/Them/Their » Made Of Words Made Of Words

[…] Thank you to Jiz Lee for spurring me in to writing about a topic that I’ve been meaning to touch on lately. Head over to their site for a little back story, but in summary they’ve written a piece on what exactly the term “genderqueer” might mean. And at the end of their post, they’ve attached an article that I’ve found extremely helpful on The Singular They and Why It’s Correct. […]

April 10, 2011 at 12:43 pm

Landon

Singular they just sounds wrong — combining a singular with a plural. “If anyone lost his shoes, he may pick them up at the kiosk.”

April 10, 2011 at 4:39 pm

Gabe

Landon: Did you even read the discussion above? It’s not combining a singular with a plural for a variety of reasons, and finding singular they to sound wrong doesn’t mean that it sounds wrong to other people or that it is wrong.

May 14, 2011 at 8:22 am

Alexander Iljin

A quote from the article:
“It’s not really a pronoun relationship anyway: The above argument supposes that they is a pronoun referring to a syntactically plural but syntactically singular quantified expression like everybody.”

I believe the last sentence should say “s_eman_tically plural but syntactically singular…”

Thanks for the great article.

May 21, 2011 at 11:59 am

David

Can I answer A and still hate the writing of C.S. Lewis?

July 27, 2011 at 12:48 am

Sharon Krossa

Coming late to the discussion, but with regard to (singular) “themself”, it, too, has a long history. I expect I could easily find some examples in the OED, but I’m too lazy, so here are a couple examples from DSL (http://dsl.ac.uk/):

That no servinge person be harboured within the paroche that tack not themself to satled service with ane master; 1636

I shall put any out of my intaile as soone as they dispose themself without my consent; 1666

For my dissertation research, I read a lot of 16th century Scots town records, and they used singular they (and themself) all over the place. After spending some years in that century’s records, I don’t buy the argument that there is anything significantly different pre- vs. post- 1970s usage. I think it is just that, due to societal concerns, from the 1970s people became hyper-aware of a usage that previously they’d simply used without thought.

August 16, 2011 at 10:27 am

What is Genderqueer? | Good Vibrations Magazine

[…] If you’d like to read more, Wikipedia actually has some great definitions on Genderqueer, Transgender, and Cisgender. A good resource is GLBTQ.com, and the amazing project genderfork.com. Got a good gender resource? Let me know! *Also check out Singular They and the Many Reasons it is Correct. […]

August 21, 2011 at 4:33 pm

A Fine Line | What’s in a pronoun?

[…] “their gender”. Some snobby grammarians would tell you that it’s incorrect, but they are wrong. Personally I think it would be best if we took gender out of it altogether and referred to […]

September 1, 2011 at 12:26 pm

Some things you might consider reading while we finish up our summer issue | Saltwater Quarterly

[…] discussions about pronoun and […]

October 30, 2011 at 3:51 pm

Vince Andrijich

The article is headed ‘the reasons why’ which is tautologous.
Stinkfly.

November 10, 2011 at 5:36 pm

How to Use “They” as a Singular Pronoun « Liberation Bound

[…] Motivated Grammar. […]

November 22, 2011 at 10:12 am

Robert

Excellent article. There is nothing at all wrong with the singular they, such usage has a very long history. The side supporting singular they can bring evidence and logic, while the side opposing, nothing but “Because I say so!” It is no different than the ban on ending a sentence with a preposition or banning split infinitives. There’s was nothing wrong with either one, and people are now realizing that just because some grammarian decreed it did not mean they had the power to do so.

January 19, 2012 at 6:35 pm

They’re Invented. So What? | Off The Map

[…] says that pronoun ‘x’ isn’t standardized? Who on earth cares? (For the record, singular they is correct, and it is not always a bad pronoun as well.) And, why, one might wonder, aren’t ae and ze […]

January 31, 2012 at 9:32 am

stand by your trans: the ‘they is’ argument « Diary of a Lipstick Terrorist

[…] Historical usage. Did you know that Chaucer used they as a singular pronoun in the 16th century? Did you know that Shakespeare did it too? Hell, even Jane Austen and the King James Bible did it! […]

February 3, 2012 at 2:43 am

SCM

I grew up the the UK in the midlands as did my husband. We both use ‘singular they’ as a natural part of our speech. I find it pretty bizarre to find Americans asserting it is some kind of ungrammatical feminist/PC plot! To my ears to use he when referring to a generic person sounds a bit pompous – possible because it was only pompous grammarians who would have used that form in the UK. I find the use of her/she as an alternative equally grating. Either sounds somehow too specific.

February 7, 2012 at 1:50 pm

Ralph Jones

Damn you people are annoying! Stop all your whining.

February 26, 2012 at 4:49 pm

June

Anyone interested in correct grammer should not read further than the title of this article. “the reason why”, it states! AHHHHH!!! Really?!!! Are you kidding me?? I surely hope so. THAT is like saying “The reason reason” or The why why! I didn’t read any further. You have no right to write an article on grammer! You showed your incompetence before you revealed the first sentence!

February 26, 2012 at 10:11 pm

Kelvin Duncan

Wonderful post. Thank you. Ignore the illiterate and ignorant pedants. There is a real need for a gender-free word to be used for the singular case. And there are many justifications for this usage.
(June should do a logic course so she can understand the differences between “why” and “many reasons”.)

February 28, 2012 at 8:26 pm

Daniel

June: Although your histrionics are mildly amusing, they are no substitute for a coherent argument — something you did not provide. If you have an argument that has more substantive points than exclamation points, we’re all ears. Otherwise, most intelligent readers will take the well-fashioned arguments of a doctoral candidate in linguistics (that would be our esteemed blogger) over the emotional rantings of a random commenter on the internet.

May 16, 2012 at 7:35 am

Charlotte

I happen to love the generic singular “they”
and I have also liked s/he and didn’t know others used it, too. But your suggestion of
“xe” is just too awesome! I love it but I’m afraid
some people might not get it unless used in context. Hm. The main goal being to communicate clearly as well as have subtle,
nuanced writing(when it’s called for, which is
unfortunately less and less these days). But “xe”
could catch on. Very Sci-Fi! Here’s to hoping.
Meanwhile I’m using “they” and “s/he”, when I’m not telling people to “Man up!” How do we say THAT gender-neutrally?

As for “Everydy knows each other”?
For me, it passes as off-the-cuff colloquial speech. Probably not going to hell for that one. Colloquial also becomes standard at ever increasing rates, too.

June 8, 2012 at 6:01 am

He or She, Him or Her: A Discussion of Gendered Pronouns | Bark: A Blog of Literature, Culture, and Art

[…] normally been considered incorrect. My question is, why? If they/them is grammatically incorrect (though some people believe it shouldn’t be), why haven’t we created a pronoun that is gender-neutral to fix these […]

July 1, 2012 at 6:36 pm

Basics: Pronouns « Genderqueer australia

[…] Comic on Gender pronouns | List of Gender Neutral pronouns | Blog on “they” as a singular pronoun […]

August 4, 2012 at 3:33 pm

Kyle

what a hyperbolic rendering of people who were simply taught in school that the singular “they” is grammatically incorrect. I’m definitely not an incompetent narcissist who likes to prey on incorrect pronoun usage, just misinformed by erroneous education.

September 2, 2012 at 8:54 pm

Gender neural pronouns: A possible solution to loosing number specification in “Third person they” but only in the abstract context of a translation exercise « Tuatua! Araara! ꞋAutara! Tara! Tala! Kōrero!

[…] Motivated Grammar […]

September 5, 2012 at 12:19 pm

BadRoad

Nice job demonstrating what it looks like to “insist that the author is an imbecile speeding the wholesale destruction of the English language”, but you might want to try a more conciliatory approach if your goal is to convince people rather than “just getting someone to pretend to agree with you long enough to shut you up. Or worse, […] scaring people into submission to a point where they feel compelled to preface their speech with apologies for any unknown violence their words are committing against the presumed propriety of the language.”

Even if the singular “they” is not strictly incorrect, I still plan to eschew its use because it seems wrong, or at least confusing, to me.

December 20, 2012 at 2:08 pm

Style Conventions and Graduate Student Writing | Explorations of Style

[…] linguistic decisions on evidence rather than dogma. The Motivated Grammar blog has a comprehensive post explaining all the ways a singular ‘they’ is acceptable. Despite the manifest good […]

December 21, 2012 at 10:03 am

ATFL

I love your style of kind of demeaning the uneducated reader. I enjoyed this post, and look forward to viewing your others, as this is the first that I have come across. Thank you for teaching the world about grammar!

January 7, 2013 at 4:33 am

Ten Top Characterization Tips | MARIAN ALLEN

[…] Yeah, this him or her stuff is clunky, but I hate that singular “they” thing. I know the singular they is not incorrect, but that doesn’t mean I have to like […]

January 11, 2013 at 10:56 am

Antonia

A very interesting article and an issue that I’ve been tussling with since becoming pregnant 6 months ago… I have chosen not to find out the sex of my baby as I would like it to be a surprise which has left me with a problem when referring to them (?) in conversation. I tend to use ‘they’ rather than ‘it’ but this seems to cause a lot of confusion for others… I am regularly asked if I’m expecting twins, to which I reply “No, just don’t like to refer to my baby as IT!” Am I correct to refer to them as the singular ‘they’ in this regard?

January 29, 2013 at 9:37 am

Singular they, you, and a ‘senseless way of speaking’ « Sentence first

[…] about singular they are unsupported by historical and present usage and unsupportable by appeal to grammar or logic. You don’t have to use it, but resistance invites unnatural awkwardness and unnecessary […]

February 19, 2013 at 11:45 pm

how is technology a writerly text? | Starring the Memex

[…] key point of the Memex is for a user to expand and annotate their notes. Each Memex thus becomes customized by the user, a product of its interactions with its […]

March 22, 2013 at 3:22 am

How This and How That | MARIAN ALLEN

[…] I did say “more than one person,” so “they” is appropriate, because it’s referring to “more than one” and not “one,” but here is a lovely post explaining why Singular They is, in fact, a correct usage. […]

April 25, 2013 at 4:22 pm

Gender Neutral Pronouns | Tuatua! Araara! 'Autara! Tara! Tala! Kautā! Kōrero!

[…] Motivated Grammar […]

June 16, 2013 at 8:37 am

Chris Niswander

Thank you. I anticipate saving some time and effort by directing overcorrectors and miscorrectors to your post.

June 30, 2013 at 3:06 pm

Stupid Sexist Pronouns | Radical Revisions

[…] used in speech, “they” is a strong contender for the slot. It sounds natural (very natural) and has a long history of use in written and spoken English. However, prescriptivists balk at this usage of the traditionally plural “they.” For now, I […]

July 15, 2013 at 2:02 pm

The Chicago Manual of Style on ‘they’ as a gender neutral pronoun >> The Thang Blog

[…] but my understanding – in spite of what some naysayers claim – is that such usage has a solid historical grounding. And traditional grammar standards need to catch up to the reality of lived […]

July 18, 2013 at 10:11 am

Ze Is Zir Own Person | Sean Carroll

[…] last one is actually pretty easy to fix. For a long time now, many people have used “they” as a singular pronoun in cases where the person being referred to is of unknown gender. I started using it years ago, and […]

July 21, 2013 at 6:49 am

Kelly d.

I just don’t like the way it appears that women are too stupid to realize “he” includes them as well.

July 27, 2013 at 1:06 pm

Reason180

My take on this is a little different. I think grammatical correctness or incorrectness is a matter of linguistic political power. Entities such as the academy and the publishing industry have the power to declare a linguistic construction grammatically correct, in contrast to people who have little power in such regards. Currently, the academy is beginning to favor particular usages of the singular “they” (for example, “Each student studied their lesson”). But I suspect that other usages of the singular “they”–usages by the less-powerful–will remain “incorrect.” Examples include: (i) “Jane raised their hand.” (ii) “John updated their Facebook status.” (iii) “The bomb hit their target.” Similarly, despite widespread usage in some linguistic communities, the plural “is” will likely remain “incorrect” unless the powerful find it useful to make it correct. Examples: (i) “People is crazy.” (ii) “Is your kids doing OK?”

August 8, 2013 at 2:03 pm

Charles Herold

The examples seem to be along the lines of, “everyone returned to their seats,” which I always thought was correct anyway. When I find myself feeling stuck with the he-or-she construct it is if I am writing something like, “the typical theater goer will mill around during intermission before returning to his or her seat.” In that case, replacing “his or her” with they seems problematic. Am I wrong?

August 29, 2013 at 8:27 am

More votes required «

[…] For controversy-fueling, you can all check out this article. […]

September 18, 2013 at 9:28 am

Brandon H.

I always wish they would just create the idea of a “subjunctive pronoun” or something like that. The subject could be one entity or multiple entities. The possibility of multiple entities would mean you would naturally use “they” so that everyone involved in whatever the action is could be credited with said action.

I don’t think assuming that a particular subject is singular, which English is forced to do in the situations where a singular-they would make natural sense, seems . . . unseemly.

My opinion, of course.

September 20, 2013 at 9:02 am

Chocorella

Reblogged this on chocorella's writing references.

October 29, 2013 at 10:27 pm

Occasionally, you actually shouldn’t use singular “they” | All Things Linguistic

[…] I’m willing to join the singular “they” love-fest as much as the next linguist or descriptivist. However, there is one context I noticed recently […]

November 18, 2013 at 12:51 pm

Make Everyday Speech Reflect Your Politics | femtastic

[…] If you would like to read more about the historical and present use of “they” as a singular pronoun (replacing he/she), check out this slightly cheeky yet informative article. […]

November 26, 2013 at 2:17 pm

Coming Out Genderqueer: An Open Letter to My Family & Friends | Sugarbutch Chronicles

[…] incorrect. But it’s not. It’s actually been used in literature for hundreds of years. Here’s one particular article on the Singular They and the Many Reasons Why It Is Correct. Read up, if that intrigues […]

December 1, 2013 at 11:46 pm

Defiler

Excuse me and maybe I’m not following this thread too closely but I’d just have to ask after all the hype about this ‘singular and plural antecedents’, am I the only one who thinks (2a) ‘Everybody knows one another’ would sound most natural?

Given that ‘everybody’ implies that there is quite a number of people here? ‘Each other’ implicitly refers to the relationship between A and B, but if you’re intending to indicate the relationships between A and B, B and C, C and D, A and C, A and D and B and D along with all possible permutations, why not use ‘one another’ which is the intended use of the phrase?

December 4, 2013 at 1:04 pm

David Rupp

Umm, it’s “Herculean”. [ducks]

December 20, 2013 at 11:06 am

Le singular they | André Racicot : Au coeur du français

[…] Les articles qui encensent le singular they ne manquent pas. Je vous signale entre autres celui-ci : https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/ […]

December 23, 2013 at 4:13 pm

Molly P.

Thank you for this article. I find it odd people talk of “logical inconsistency” with regards to using “they” as a singular pronoun, when actually using “he” makes a lot less logical sense. Since we don’t actually have a gender-neutral pronoun, adopting either “he” or “they” leads to exactly one problem on either side. When using “he”, there’s a disagreement of gender and when using “they” there’s a disagreement of number.

Logically a plural contains a singular a lot more than a he contains a she.

December 27, 2013 at 3:50 pm

I find all of the following sentences to be grammatical, and either disprefer or simply do not accept the other construction.

• “When a boxer enters the ring, he should duck beneath the top rope.”

• “When a tenant plans not to renew their lease, they should notify the office in advance.”

• “Every police officer who arrested a murderer insulted them.” (ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_sentence, where it currently reads “… him”)

• “The murderer is still unidentified, but the police know where he is now, and they should have him in custody by midnight.” (Even if there is no evidence beyond stereotypes that the murderer is male, although I would likely try to rephrase the sentence if that occurred to me.)

• “They’re sure to win accolades at Clausewitz.” (Half-remembered graffito from a men’s restroom wall, where “They” refers to a previous graffito’s author. Use of “He” would be grammatical, but would have implied the second author knew or could identify the first one.)

• “Every dog has its day.” (“their” would also be okay. Not so “his”, despite that being the most common Google hit!)

I offer no rationalizations or defenses of the above, because this isn’t a declaration of principle; these are just data points from an idiolect.

January 2, 2014 at 4:43 am

What’s in a pronoun? | A Fine Line

January 23, 2014 at 12:16 am

“Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct” | Neuterlicious

[…] I came across the following post last night which covers the use of the singular ‘they’ pronoun extensively: “Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct”. […]

January 23, 2014 at 10:25 am

David Silverman

Just curious – is heruclean the opposite of herudirty?

February 23, 2014 at 11:03 pm

more gender pronouns: they | found in translation

[…] robust defence of this pronoun reminds us that the singular they has a noble tradition going back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, […]

February 26, 2014 at 6:18 am

Willy Blackley

In the following paragraph above:

“It’s not really a pronoun relationship anyway: The above argument supposes that they is a pronoun referring to a syntactically plural but syntactically singular quantified expression like everybody. But what if you’ve got a semantically singular one like anybody?”

the first “syntactically” ought to be “semantically”, I think.

Also in the following paragraph above:

“…And, if you subscribe to Mark Liberman’s one-liner “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” you’ll be interested to see that the King James Version, along with the Tyndale, Bishop’s, and Geneva Bibles, along a range of other versions of the Christian Bible all employ singular theys.”

you’ve missed a “with” in the second “along [with]”.

Thank you for the defence of the singular “they”.

February 26, 2014 at 11:55 am

Defiler

Just fucking use they. What if you have a sentence like

“He should work his hardest because he won’t know what kind of a future he would have if he didn’t.” ?

What’ll it be then?

“He/She should work his/her hardest because he/she won’t know what kind of a future he/she would have if he/she didn’t.” ???

“They should work their hardest because they won’t know what kind of a future they would have if they didn’t.” ?

February 26, 2014 at 12:15 pm

Reason180

I don’t think ‘They should work their hardest because they won’t know what kind of a future they would have if they didn’t.’ necessarily counts as singular they. The writer might be referring to a group of people rather than just one.

February 26, 2014 at 2:17 pm

Defiler

Either way it works, does it not?

February 26, 2014 at 2:42 pm

Reason180

Regarding “They should work their hardest because they won’t know what kind of a future they would have if they didn’t.” I think it’s ambiguous as to whether it’s referring to one person or to a group of people. For the same of communicative clarity, I think a non-gendered pronoun would be superior to the pronoun “they” being both singular and plural. The only advantage of using the singular they (rather than a non-gendered pronoun) is that a substantial number of people are already used to it, whereas almost no English speaker is used to non-gendered pronoun to refer to older-than-newborn people.

March 16, 2014 at 5:26 pm

Jasper

I use they as my personal pronoun because of my gender identity. I’ll have to remember to show this to those who decide to be difficult about respecting my choice.

April 14, 2014 at 7:20 pm

Janusz D.

The article makes a lot of good points, but the author smugness and condensation is hard to stomach. “They” should get over “themselves”.

April 30, 2014 at 2:22 am

Jonathan

noting that it “is being left unaltered by copy editors”

Yes, that’s the best evidence ever. No one is more pedantic than a copy editor, so if it’s alright for them… :) (Or rather “us”, being a copy editor myself.)

April 30, 2014 at 4:56 am

Richard

An observation: If “they” is to be be truly singular, I think we should say “They is the only one remaining.” [and not, “They are the only one remaining.”]

April 30, 2014 at 3:30 pm

tdshepard

English already has a gender-neutral 3rd-person singular pronoun. The word is “it.” Misuse of the word “they” in the singular leads to ambiguity in many situations, because when, for example, the subject is singular, using “they” logically implies there is yet another (plural) party involved in the reference.

April 30, 2014 at 5:10 pm

Tyler

Regarding your section: “It’s not really a pronoun relationship anyway,” I have to disagree. You cite Steven Pinker’s text as an example of the singular they behaving non-referentially: “The logical point that everyone but the language mavens intuitively grasps is that everyone and they are not an antecedent and a pronoun referring to the same person in the world, which would force them to agree in number. They are a “quantifier” and a “bound variable,” a different logical relationship. Everyone returned to their seats means “For all X, X returned to X’s seat.” The “X” is simply a placeholder that keeps track of the roles that players play across different relationships: the X that comes back to a seat is the same X that owns the seat that X comes back to. The their there does not, in fact, have plural number, because it refers neither to one thing nor to many things; it does not refer at all.”
I think this is where you are mistaken. I’m not a linguist, but isn’t it impossible for language to be non-referential? Isn’t language, by definition, referential? “They” will always be a pronoun, and a pronoun inherently has to refer to a noun, or else it won’t make sense. Which is why the sentence Pinker provides, “Everyone returned to their seats,” is incorrect. Their, as a syntactically plural pronoun, must refer to a syntactically plural noun, and in this case it erroneously refers to a syntactically singular noun, “everyone”. I think the problem you come across is semantic ambiguity in Pinker’s sentence. The word “everyone” does not specify number, so we cannot say for certain whether or not it is semantically singular or semantically plural (after all, everyone or everybody could refer to just one body). What we can say for certain, though, is that, according to the English language, “everyone” is a syntactically singular noun. As such, it requires a syntactically singular pronoun (i.e. he/she). Despite semantic ambiguity, the laws of syntax must be followed.
In addition, I’d like to say that the use of “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun is dated and, in what we like to think of as a liberal and enlightened day and age, flagrantly sexist. There are many arguable solutions to this linguistic problem, one of which is simply using the “s/he” or “he or she,” “his or her” expressions that so many find awkward: “Everyone returned to his or her seat.” Personally, I think the awkwardness of a sentence is irrelevant: language isn’t designed to always sound pretty or smooth or to avoid “awkwardness”, but it is designed to be consistent and follow its own rules and logic. More important, however, is that there is another solution to the lack of a non-offensive, gender-neutral singular pronoun in English, and that solution is linguistic creativity and evolution. We can create a gender-neutral singular pronoun, as some have already done, without appropriating a plural pronoun for incorrect singular usage. In fact, I think the singular usage of “they,” as a solution to English’s lack of a singular, gender-neutral pronoun, is actually self-defeating and leads to increased confusion in English as a linguistic system. If your linguistic system lacks a crucial type of word, in this case, a gender-neutral, singular pronoun, the solution is not to take another type of word and attempt to give it an additional meaning or usage: that will lead to further confusion. The solution is to create a new word entirely. That seems, at least, to me, much more efficient for the system as a whole.
I understand that I am commenting on this article many years after the fact, but I would nonetheless appreciate your feedback if you find the time to give it! Thanks for a great and intriguing read!

May 14, 2014 at 1:12 pm

Internet Diderot | The Pronoun War: English’s Gender Neutral Third Person

[…] If you’re still not convinced, check out this article from Motivated Grammar about why singular they is perfectly acceptable. […]

May 26, 2014 at 4:56 pm

Tonto

I must say I agree with Tyler and their view: the laws of syntax have to be followed. They are quite right in that.
What are the original author’s thoughts on their article now? Did they have to witness more tantrums and outbursts directed at them? What do they think now, five years later? Have the author changed their opinion?

June 8, 2014 at 3:02 pm

A Case for the Singular They as a Genderless Pronoun in Formal Speech and Writing | Teaching

[…] “And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame / They wol come up.” Gabe Doyle in his blog Motivated Grammar lists other respected writers who have used it, including C. S. Lewis, ”Lewis Carroll, Walt […]

June 10, 2014 at 6:35 am

Tuesday Links! | Gerry Canavan

[…] * A Brief History of the Gendered Pronoun in English. In defense of the singular “they.” […]

June 19, 2014 at 6:13 pm

Tip 8: Get Enough Protein (Out of Spite) | Weird! Why Aren't You Vegan?

[…] needs to worry about getting enough protein as long as he or she (or “they,” which is a thing now) is getting enough […]

June 22, 2014 at 3:31 am

DIVA article on non-binary gender | Rewriting The Rules

[…] here because so many of our words are gendered. Many non-binary people have embraced the – perfectly grammatical – pronoun they (rather than he/she), and some have developed alternative pronouns (like zie, per […]

June 22, 2014 at 11:26 am

The Sunday Brunch Post: 22nd of June | The Holywell Street Librarian

[…] lingering sense of unease around it, these days reputable usage guides endorse singular they for a whole host of reasons and institutions from Facebook to the Canadian Government are increasingly accepting of it, so […]

June 27, 2014 at 7:52 pm

Lorraine grindstaff

I am convinced! It is singular “they” for me!

July 6, 2014 at 3:41 pm

Linda Lomas

Would the singular for ass, as in small horse, be used as, an ass or a ass? I believe a ass was used in past times Thank you
Linda Lomas

July 15, 2014 at 4:16 pm

Gender-Neutral Pronouns | A Different Way of Life

[…] works, such as that of C.S. Lewis. There is an excellent blog post about this topic here: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/. I will reblog that post as well after posting this. Anyways, long story short, […]

July 15, 2014 at 4:18 pm

funhousefreak

Reblogged this on A Different Way of Life and commented:
Here is the post about the singular pronoun “they.”

July 28, 2014 at 9:19 am

Andy Staudacher

To serve as a landing page, the article should start with a clear definition of what “singular they” is. I could google it, but then what’s the point of having this landing page?
It doesn’t have to have the depth of a full definition article, but I’d make the example clearer by calling out alternatives to express the same sentence without singular they for example.

August 12, 2014 at 7:16 am

Coming Out–Resources for Friends and Family | captainglittertoes

[…] Grammatical discussion of the singular “they” pronoun: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/ […]

August 22, 2014 at 6:03 pm

Everyone their own editor | Rapid Notes

[…] is that your prose will not be distorted by some mossback Associated Press Stylebook literalist, such as objecting to the singular they in the headline for this […]

September 18, 2014 at 1:54 pm

Jeff H

There seems to be a mistake in this sentence: “The above argument supposes that /they/ is a pronoun referring to a syntactically plural but syntactically singular quantified expression like /everybody/.” My best guess is that it should say “*semantically* plural but syntactically singular”.

September 29, 2014 at 1:25 pm

Sheogorath

I’ve wanted for some time to have one place to send everyone who complains about singular they , a single page that can debunk whatever junk they’re peddling against it.
Well, now you’ve got one here.

October 7, 2014 at 9:11 am

Quickies: A Pronominal Predicament… | Coming Out Three Times

[…] of you are aware that i have recently made the decision to change my personal pronouns to the perfectly grammatically acceptable gender-neutral singular pronoun set […]

October 14, 2014 at 2:00 pm

Ways Men In Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist | this is not a pattern

[…] Relatedly, avoid assuming male users in your documentation. Just stop worrying and embrace the singular “they”. […]

October 16, 2014 at 11:10 am

On Pronoun Etiquette | Catching Wine

[…] which is generally considered a respectful gender-neutral pronoun (and yes, it can be singular). The person may say no; respect that. This is a valid thing to ask if you’re having trouble […]

October 16, 2014 at 5:08 pm

Pronouns and Gender | Beyond Hanky Code

October 22, 2014 at 9:33 pm

22 Masc. Redux and Other Reflections / 20 Pronoun Trouble | Verbose/Terse

[…] SINGULAR THEY IS INCORRECT” the instant someone mentions it (and spoiler alert, the shouter is wrong [Google It]… and even if they were, wouldn’t it be better to respect the […]

October 26, 2014 at 2:59 pm

The Genderqueer Language Learner is neither nor | The Compassionate Language Learner

[…] And for the pedants who object to my pronoun (“they”): Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct. […]

November 10, 2014 at 12:25 am

Ella

Thanks for the useful article. I have always felt that a gender-neutral singular pronoun was necessary and it turns out we’ve always had one!
I just have one query, regarding this section:
“Everyone returned to their seats means “For all X, X returned to X’s seat.” The “X” is simply a placeholder that keeps track of the roles that players play across different relationships: the X that comes back to a seat is the same X that owns the seat that X comes back to. The their there does not, in fact, have plural number, because it refers neither to one thing nor to many things; it does not refer at all.”
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to me that this is an example of singular ‘their’. Everyone (all the people – plural) returned to their seats (seats – plural). What makes any part of this singular? Wouldn’t phrasing it in the singular read “Each individual returned to their seat”? (I’m still totally happy with the ‘their’ by the way!)
Secondly, I am confused by the statement that ‘their’ “does not refer at all.” What does this mean? What role does a (pro)noun play if not referring to someone or something? It seems to me that “they” (“their”) does refer – it refers to “everyone”, in this case, all the people who had left their seats. Have I misread something?

November 10, 2014 at 2:29 am

Tonto

A – “Have you met the new teacher yet?”
B – “No, what subject do they teach?”
A – “Who are ‘they’?”
B – “The new teacher. Are they young?”
A – “You are confusing me.”
B – “Then at least can you tell me what cars they drive?”
(NB. Since ‘they’ is singular, it should really be ‘does they teach’, ‘is they young’, ‘cars they drives’.)

December 23, 2014 at 11:19 am

Singular ‘they’ | Lauren B. Collister

[…] It’s an old post, but it’s a good one: a master post of arguments for using singular ‘they’ as a gender-neutral pronoun in Engl…. […]

January 13, 2015 at 1:25 pm

kintaro777

“Everybody”, “nobody”, “someone”, etc. are generic persons.
A generic person represents a certain group of people.
So it is essentially plural.
Most(or all) of your examples refer to a generic person as they.
It seems to me that referring to a specific person as they is grammatically incorrect.
For example, let’s say there is a person named Leslie Brown whose gender is unknown.
I don’t think it’s grammatically correct to refer to this person as they.

January 25, 2015 at 9:47 am

Richard Anderson

An implication of legitimizing the “singular they.”

On the presumption that God has no actual gender or sex characteristics: “There is only one God, and Muhammad is their prophet.”

January 31, 2015 at 6:40 pm

Daira Hopwood

“The above argument supposes that they is a pronoun referring to a syntactically plural but syntactically singular quantified expression like everybody.”

This should say “semantically plural but syntactically singular”.

February 6, 2015 at 8:20 am

How using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun can change the world

[…] easier to understand, and not wrong. Published examples of this usage abound, from as early as Chaucer through the present […]

March 1, 2015 at 2:44 pm

lilplasticpurse

Reblogged this on lonely and commented:
i love this

March 25, 2015 at 7:15 am

Grammar | Rturpin's Blog

[…] The next time someone tells me not to use a singular they, they will be directed here. […]

April 14, 2015 at 5:12 pm

jamesrovira

Ah, dumb. It’s never necessary to use “they” singular: just make the rest of the sentence plural.

I really don’t care what Austen or Chaucer did as we’re no longer speaking their English.

April 15, 2015 at 10:19 pm

Sheogorath

@ jamesrovira: No, we don’t speak the same language as Geoffrey Chaucer. He did live in the fourteenth century, after all! However, we do speak the same language as Jane Austen, albeit with more modern slang and swears.

April 21, 2015 at 11:45 pm

matslj

Reblogged this on Views on grammar and commented:
Here’s a good summary of arguments in defense of singular ‘they’. Good links at the bottom of the page.

April 29, 2015 at 7:24 am

Working the Pelvic Floor of Language | Word Spy

[…] Never forget, though, that language is the people’s. Your witless superstition will, by-and-large, be ignored by the speakers of the language, and the alleged impropriety will almost certainly win out in the end. Don’t mistake yourself for a brave defender of our language against the barbarians at the gates when, in truth, you’re nothing but a millennialist shouting about the end-times of the English language. Meanwhile, the world spins on, and the language flourishes, hale and hearty. —Gabe Doyle, “Singular ‘they’ and the many reasons why it’s correct“ […]

May 15, 2015 at 10:56 am

You Know Those Common Objections to 'They' Pronouns? Here Are 9 Simple Facts to Shut Them Down — Everyday Feminism

[…] is a common grammatical confusion that has been explained in so many different places. Essentially, here’s the deal: They/them/their pronouns are part of a wider grammatical […]

June 22, 2015 at 8:39 pm

A Supportive Community? | Coming Out Three Times

[…] was also, for whatever reason, told that my singular they pronouns were grammatically incorrect (they’re not, by the way), and that our other non-binary member (at the time) was also confusing because ze uses a different […]

September 7, 2015 at 7:17 pm

Changing Use Of Language Impacted By Trans Communities As Shown By Entries In The Oxford English Dictionary, US Online Edition – Including The Use of ‘They’ As A Singular Pronoun! | Fairy JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More

[…] entry in the blog ‘Motivate Grammer” discusses use of they as singular and has the following to see about historical […]

September 7, 2015 at 8:53 pm

[…] entry in the blog ‘Motivate Grammer” discusses use of they as singular and has the following to see about historical […]

September 7, 2015 at 8:58 pm

[…] entry in the blog ‘Motivate Grammer” discusses use of they as singular and has the following to see about historical […]

September 7, 2015 at 9:01 pm

[…] entry in the blog ‘Motivate Grammer” discusses use of they as singular and has the following to see about historical […]

September 17, 2015 at 5:44 pm

Fenn

This article dodges the point, and as such is both worthless and dishonest, or is simply not intelligent enough to get to the issue. All of your sentences are examples of semantically plural nouns being used with “they”. Of course this is correct, because phrases like “every one” and “everybody” are semantically plural. No one intelligent would every argue over this. But sentences like “An author should learn to mind their grammar” have never been correct. In these instances the use of “he” as gender-neutral is long established. “An author should learn to mind his grammar” does not imply that female authors don’t have to mind their grammar, and never has.

September 18, 2015 at 12:45 pm

Mona

If a transgender person wishes to use the singular they or a gender neutral pronoun such as “xe” and you refuse to honor that decision based on archaic rules, you are disrespectful and transphobic. End of story.

Languages are always evolving, and new words are always being created when we need them. Words like “blog” and “vlog” and the act of “googling” something didn’t exist not too long ago, but they do now and no one has a problem with it. Why uphold such a flimsy grammar “rule” when you are harming people in the process? People who do not respect pronouns are actively refusing to accommodate those who are gender-nonconforming and that is harmful.

People like me who are transgender and are not comfortable with he/she pronouns want you all to know that we simply don’t care about these grammar rules that you constantly try to defend when you disrespect us.. They are outdated. English isn’t a sacred language that needs to be defended, it’s always changing. Let the change happen.

October 11, 2015 at 8:52 am

A Personal Note | Kamrah

[…] I realize some people will have apoplexy due to grammar rules, but hey, if it’s good for Shakespeare, it’s good for you. As Kamrah, for now, however, female pronouns are appropriate and fine […]

October 20, 2015 at 9:00 am

Fostering Convention Awareness in Students: Eschewing a Rules-Based View of Language | the becoming radical

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

October 27, 2015 at 12:53 pm

They and the Headlines - Karin Cather Editorial Services LLC

[…] by asserting that the use of the singular they was proper in that sentence, but also by linking to articles which explored this issue in more depth. Her response was this: “Unfortunately, it’s not […]

October 31, 2015 at 7:15 pm

C Baker

Of course this is correct, because phrases like “every one” and “everybody” are semantically plural.

They are not. And they never have been. You are simply incorrect. You would never say “Everybody want a hug” or “Everyone go to the store on Monday” in SAE.

November 1, 2015 at 3:01 pm

Non-binary gender inclusion in the workplace | The Queerness

[…] using pronouns other than “he” or “she” face additional resistance based on spurious grammatical arguments. It is up to Human Resources and management within a company to ensure all staff are respecting […]

December 7, 2015 at 7:49 pm

sand49

Reblogged this on sand49 and commented:
Language is political because the power structure of society is embedded in it. The message is the most important aim of language. If the ruling class don’t like the message they try to shut you down by being critical about how you say things.

December 9, 2015 at 11:01 pm

The Singular "They" — When Pronouns Get Personal - Literacy & NCTE

[…] have long been at least a few literary leaders who accepted the singular they. Even Jane Austen and William Shakespeare found the singular they useful at times. And just this […]

December 11, 2015 at 3:47 pm

LGBTQ+ 101 (UWEX State Conference, 11 November 2015) | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

December 21, 2015 at 9:41 am

This year marks a new language shift in how English speakers use pronouns - Quartz

[…] up to what sensible grammarians and excellent writers have been saying for ages: there’s just no good reason to condemn singular “they.” And more importantly, there are plenty of reasons to […]

December 21, 2015 at 8:36 pm

This year marks a new language shift in how English speakers use pronouns | CZAAL Your Social Announcement Tab

December 28, 2015 at 9:47 pm

Why I Use The Pronoun They « Alex Gino

[…] More on the history of the singular-they here: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

January 9, 2016 at 3:12 pm

Bill Weinberg

If you are a “descriptivist,” what does “correct” even mean? I utterly oppose this. https://www.facebook.com/notes/bill-weinberg/against-the-singular-they/1001553363221431?comment_id=1001567409886693&notif_t=note_comment

January 11, 2016 at 11:25 am

A Very Queer Word of the Year for 2015 | Vus Times

[…] ‘they’ has been around for a while, long before the innovative, gender fluid usage. Motivated Grammar points out that it can be found in the King James version of the Bible, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and […]

January 13, 2016 at 9:22 am

Some positive gender news | the funcrunch files

[…] they has been in standard usage since Shakespeare’s time, but telling people that hasn’t stopped them from insisting […]

January 15, 2016 at 9:14 am

Friday Roundup: A Cinderella-Like High Heeled-Shaped House Of God Edition | Site Specific

[…] all the time, and also makes numerous appearances in any English major’s basic coursework dating back to Chaucer. Beyond the significant fact that the singular they doesn’t alienate subjects who […]

January 17, 2016 at 8:05 pm

What’s in a pronoun? – A Fine Line

January 18, 2016 at 7:37 pm

LGBTQ+ 101 (UW-Waukesha, 18 January 2016) | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

February 24, 2016 at 1:07 am

The Air Moon Ch. 4: Kagen no Tsuki, Part 8 | Warped Frost

[…] It wouldn’t be until after I graduated college that I came to know that there is historical validity to the use of “they” to refer to one person in […]

February 28, 2016 at 11:03 am

Nathan S.

Interesting article and strong defense of the use of singular they in regards to indefinite pronouns and nouns that are syntactically singular but refer to a group of individuals.

I will say that I find your condemnation of “the sort of person who rages at the alleged grammatical buffoonery of your fellows” somewhat ironic. You are quite condescending in how you condemn condescension.

March 8, 2016 at 8:45 am

LGBTQ+ 101 (UW-Richland, 9 March 2016) | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

March 30, 2016 at 7:21 am

How This and How That - MARIAN ALLEN, AUTHOR LADY

June 1, 2016 at 1:20 pm

Alex

If “he” really can be gender-neutral, then these sentences should be fine:

Man, like other mammals, carries his young in his womb until he is ready to give birth. He will nourish his child from his breast for several years.

I translated that into French and my partner didn’t even know what the problem was, but then French actually does have gender-neutral meanings of gendered pronouns (“elle” to refer to “une personne” or “il” to refer to “un individu”).

I can’t imagine an English speaker saying those sentences with a straight face.

June 21, 2016 at 9:24 pm

Singular they | diemperdidi

[…] https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

July 6, 2016 at 3:25 pm

Nunyo Bidness

“You’re not helping; you’re just getting someone to pretend to agree with you long enough to shut you up. Or worse, you’re scaring people into submission to a point where they feel compelled to preface their speech with apologies for any unknown violence their words are committing against the presumed propriety of the language.”

–This is exactly how those of us who DO NOT want to use singular they instead of he or she, feel about the subject.
–Want me to refer to you with the gender neutral pronouns, they / them / their? See quote above for my response.

September 22, 2016 at 9:32 am

Seize the They – The Write Attitude

[…] In the 1970s, feminists started the fight against generic “he,” arguing that it unfairly excluded women from statements that should have been about all people without regard for gender. Although traditionalists argued that “he,” “his,” and “him” included women too, it is easy to find incredibly weird-sounding counterexamples, such as this one from Gabe Doyle at Motivated Grammar: […]

October 2, 2016 at 5:27 pm

LGBTQ+ 101 (Ripon High School/ Lumen, 3 October 2016) | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

October 5, 2016 at 12:53 pm

Molly

Confused: “She kept her head and kicked her shoes off, as everybody ought to do who falls into deep water in their clothes.”

She isn’t using singular “they”. She’s describing “their” as EVERYBODY who falls into deep water in THEIR clothes. Thus describing plural everybody. Sorry I don’t see how that makes sense.

I also don’t have a problem with people wanting to be referred to as singular they or them or their. But it should be everyone’s individual choice to follow along. A lot of people think it’s ridiculous and they have a right to exercise their first amendment rights and continue speaking to people as they always have. The micro-aggression thing is way over the top. If you cannot function in a society full of people who insist on using proper grammar, then you are weak in my opinion. It would be more grammatically appropriate to use “it” as a gender neutral term. But apparently that’s offensive in some other way. I don’t know, I can’t keep up.

October 5, 2016 at 1:11 pm

Molly

Mona said: “If a transgender person wishes to use the singular they or a gender neutral pronoun such as “xe” and you refuse to honor that decision based on archaic rules, you are disrespectful and transphobic. End of story.”

This is absolutely ridiculous. If you want to call someone “transphobic” which AS YOU KNOW means fear of transgender people, just because they have their own life and are too busy to GIVE A SHIT about what YOU want to be called because it doesn’t just naturally roll off ones tongue…. Shame on you, move on because you are selfish and apparently feel you are so superior in some way that you are convinced that we should all hold our tongue and bow down. Reality check, sweetie… no one cares. Stop finding ways to be a victim.

October 31, 2016 at 6:24 am

Jesse

This started out well, with the first few sentences having the potential to be educational, but quickly turned to the sort of snotty, self-righteous sort of drivel that is written to make one feel superior and shut down reasonable discussion. If your goal is to actually change the minds of readers who may have a dissenting opinion, try not coming off as a complete twat and engage them. Show them something a new way of being. What you’ve done here is essentially grandstanding and preaching to the choir.

November 3, 2016 at 11:38 pm

Robert Jackson

I was hoping you would address the situation where the antecedent of they is a proper name. (e.g. William chose to bring their lunch to the classroom.) That’s where we are having some issues.

November 24, 2016 at 11:09 am

Gum

Garbage. They is a plural pronoun. He & she are singular. You confuse the ad sensum reference to a formally singular word which has plural connotation, like everyone . . . they. Everyone has a plural connotation, but singular in form. Thus it is understandable that such nouns might be the antecedent of they. IMHO the use of they for singular is politically-correct speech, & much of the defense of it is merely ax-grinding deceitful rhetoric.

January 13, 2017 at 5:17 am

The “Shit Cis People Say” Alphabet: G is for “grammatically incorrect” | Valprehension

[…] here, to be honest. It’s been done, and done, and done again. And again. And again. You get the idea? The thing is, though, that it shouldn’t fucking well […]

March 2, 2017 at 3:53 pm

Gender Neutral Pronouns – Pronombres de Genero Neutro | inglesrmidiomas

[…] come. For further information on the use of singular “their” throughout the centuries, see the large body of information that Henry Churchyard has compiled on the […]

May 9, 2017 at 9:39 pm

The historical case for ‘themself’ – Site Title

[…] https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

May 15, 2017 at 4:47 am

5 Ways Teachers Can Be More Inclusive of Transgender Students – Affinity Magazine

[…] ‘him or her’, the sentence would be clunky and just wouldn’t work. Additionally, many revered and celebrated writers throughout history have used the singular ‘they’ whe…, and the singular ‘they’ was even named the 2015 Word of the Year by the American […]

June 14, 2017 at 10:51 pm

What is GenderQueer? (To Me) – Jiz Lee

[…] check out Singular They and the Many Reasons it is Correct. Thanks all for your comments, which helped me to understand more about the term cisgender. Ive […]

June 22, 2017 at 8:42 am

Trans 101 (BWWC at UNC-Chapel Hill, June 2017) | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

June 25, 2017 at 8:24 am

Why I Like Singular They – Tragic Gender Story

[…] then, Chaucer used it. Jane Austen did […]

August 23, 2017 at 6:59 am

Ask Sex Coach Leigh: cis-gendered man asks | Take Back Your SEX

[…] It can take some practice, but there are lots of alternatives to gendered and binary words. My advice is to choose options that feel natural to you. Instead of addressing people as “you guys” or “dudes” or “ladies and gentlemen”, try “folks,” “friends,” “y’all,” or even “esteemed guests,” depending on the situation. I’m also partial to “lovelies,” “kittens,” and “cuties,” but you do you. Replace “he or she” or the dreaded “he/she” with “they.” This works any time you are unsure of a person’s gender, and you want to avoid making assumptions. And while I can only assume that you, lovely reader, know better, let me just say it again for the folks in the back: The singular “they” IS grammatically correct. […]

August 26, 2017 at 3:07 pm

GENDER PRONOUNS FOR REFUSING TO USE WHICH IS TORONTO PROF. THREATENED WITH TERMINATION | soulipsis

[…] come. For further information on the use of singular “their” throughout the centuries, see the large body of information that Henry Churchyard has compiled on the […]

August 31, 2017 at 5:42 am

The Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People | Radical Copyeditor

[…] whose gender is unknown has a long and fairly consistent history in the English language, and many people have documented how using they in both singular and plural fashion is grammatically correct, […]

September 4, 2017 at 5:35 am

The Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People | Radical Copyeditor

[…] whose gender is unknown has a long and fairly consistent history in the English language, and many different people have documented how using they in both singular and plural fashion is […]

October 1, 2017 at 10:39 am

Sunday – pronouns, gaslighting and cognitive dissonance | Eclectic Wednesday

[…] and “she”, it seems that the best option would be to use “they.” Singular “they” has a long history in English already, unlike neologisms like “ze.” What I’m not so sure about is how this would be […]

November 3, 2017 at 1:04 pm

Singular 'They' Named Word of the Year, Dear Megan Loses It - ClearVoice

[…] every link I clicked on led to praise of the singular ‘they.’ There was this spirited defense, in which the author warns the likes of me, “Don’t mistake yourself for a brave defender of our […]

December 15, 2017 at 1:26 am

Steven

“You can even just stubbornly plow on, using he as a gender-neutral pronoun until you grow tired of people pointing out that it isn’t really.” No one uses he as a gender-neutral pronoun you idiot.

February 11, 2018 at 3:31 pm

LGBTQ 101 Guest Lecture for Dr. Kayoung’s PSY 270: Psychology of Discrimination Class | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

February 16, 2018 at 9:46 am

Ask Sex Coach Leigh: Using non-gendered language – Sex Coach Leigh

March 4, 2018 at 12:17 pm

Time for New Pronouns – Shannon E. Wyss

[…] (This article makes a lot of really great grammatical points. Be forewarned, however, that it’s tone is bitter, angry, and patronizing.): https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

June 6, 2018 at 9:01 pm

What is Genderqueer? – Jiz Lee

July 4, 2018 at 12:40 pm

Janine Doggett

Brilliant. Thank you! I said there is no such thing as a singular they. I am a fool. Your work is done.

July 30, 2018 at 5:08 pm

Pronoun Etiquette Guide – Reshaping Reality

[…] (Note: For those who may be angry about singular they, I would invite you to read the history on its usage and the argument as to why it is valid here.) […]

September 20, 2018 at 2:24 pm

Trans 101 Guest Lecture for Dr. DeMuynck’s GSW 101: Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies Class | Lisa Hager

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct […]

September 28, 2018 at 1:55 pm

Non-binary inclusive language – digital content(ed)

[…] Some people worry that it’s grammatically incorrect to use they to refer to one person. But it’s ok, even Chaucer did it. […]

January 22, 2019 at 4:14 pm

Gregory Heyworth

Let me respond narrowly to one serious problem in the argument for the history of “they” as a singular pronoun. As a medievalist and philologist, I should point out that the oft-quoted line from Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale “And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame/ They wol come up and offre a Goddes name” is, for all the oldest and best witnesses, outright wrong. Hengwrt, Ellesmere (the two recognized best mss.) along with a host of others, all read “He wol come up…” not “They wol come up….” Don’t trust me though: look at the editions of the editors who worked with the original mss., namely Robinson, Ralph Hanna III, Larry Benson. In their critical apparatuses, they list assiduously all the main variants of every line. No “They” listed. I even double checked actual facsimiles of Ellesmere and Hengwrt myself; they both read “He….”

Now, might one or more of the eighty odd mss. of the CT contain the plural reading? Sure! But that usage is not an example of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun, but of the use of the pronoun “whoso” (like ‘nobody,’ ‘eche,’ [each], ‘noon’ [no one]) as indeterminately singular or plural. That usage is indeed ambiguous and has a long history of variance. What you will NOT find in Middle English is a simple “thei is.” Find a few of those before you make uninformed arguments about the history of English.

June 7, 2019 at 2:54 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – World Best News

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 2:54 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – News about world

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 2:54 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – Golden News

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 2:56 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – Hckr News

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 2:58 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – Outside The Know

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 2:59 pm

New top story on Hacker News: Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – Latest news

[…] Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct 4 by shawndumas | 0 comments on Hacker News. […]

June 7, 2019 at 3:00 pm

Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct – INDIA NEWS

[…] Article URL: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

June 7, 2019 at 3:02 pm

Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct | Mark Beazley | MarkBeazley.Com

[…] Article URL: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

July 18, 2019 at 7:09 pm

The Singular They-Them – The Radnor Press

[…] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct… […]

December 18, 2019 at 7:12 am

Gerard Stevens

Wow! talk about a condescending tone…

July 25, 2020 at 6:02 am

Gender Pronouns | LGBT Resource Center – The Gay Marriage Blog

[…] come. For further information on the use of singular “their” throughout the centuries, see the large body of information that Henry Churchyard has compiled on the […]

October 18, 2020 at 9:14 am

Don Groff

I only find the usage confusing when it is applied to a specific individual, not with technically singular but indefinite terms like “someone,” “anybody,” and so forth.

So I’m fine with saying, “Someone left their purse on that chair” (or “To each their own”!), and I readily acknowledge that this usage goes back centuries.

But how many examples from Chaucer or Shakespeare involve “they” as a reference to … Harry standing over there?

May 27, 2021 at 11:00 pm

Writing and Allyship Around Non-Binary Gender – A. L. Lester

[…] Motivated Grammar and the Singular ‘they’ […]

June 10, 2021 at 8:37 pm

Tournesol

Reblogged this on Tournesol dans un Jardin and commented:
and that is that, they said firmly!

June 21, 2021 at 7:12 am

A Primer on Pronouns: The Singular ‘They’

[…] But singular “they” is wrong. It’s not, actually. Send prescriptivists to this site. […]

June 21, 2021 at 7:47 am

A Primer on Pronouns: Using the Singular ‘They’ – Piano Teacher Dallas TX

[…] But singular “they” is wrong. It’s not, actually. Send prescriptivists to this site. […]

June 21, 2021 at 9:27 am

A Primer on Pronouns: The Singular ‘They’ - Cazy Boy Tech

[…] But singular “they” is wrong. It’s not, actually. Send prescriptivists to this site. […]

June 21, 2021 at 10:14 am

A Primer on Pronouns: Using the Singular ‘They’ – Live News 2 Go Education

[…] But singular “they” is wrong. It’s not, actually. Send prescriptivists to this site. […]

June 27, 2021 at 4:05 am

A Primer on Pronouns: Using the Singular ‘They’ - Free School Management APP

[…] But singular “they” is wrong. It’s not, actually. Send prescriptivists to this site. […]

December 13, 2022 at 4:59 pm

Dave

Oh my gosh this is missing the point. Of course “he” is not gender neutral. It’s gender arbitrary. It says, I’m using a standard arbitrary reference to an arbitrary human as a stand-in for a human I know little about. By having a protocol to always use the same choice, in fact any implications were avoided. Intelligent people always understood that, and why anyone would be offended, I have no idea. The people intentionally offending others are those like you, and because of your own lack of imagination. There is no gender-neutral human, but conjuring, in your speech, an image of an actual human, not an abstraction of one, makes stories clearly more tangible. Is that insulting? Why?

If you put on a play of a typified character that may have been a man or a woman, do you use an abstractified actor or maybe you choose a gender? Do you think your audience is too dumb to imagine your version may be a commentary on a typical person, with many of the points not necessarily depending on the particular gender selected? Smart people can understand without assuming offense. Of course if you’re talking about dresses, you probably know something about the gender of the person in question, and then your arbitrary straw person doesn’t fit your context, so yeah, then your staged reconstruction seems strange. You proved nothing with that. I have no idea why you bring up voting rights, almost as if that implies men were automatically dismissive of women “back then,” which simply isn’t at all true. In fact if you think outside your box you’d realize that people had to travel to vote, which is why voting is on Tuesday and not Monday. If women had been allowed to vote, it would have been an enormous disadvantage for the interests of rural families AND their women. I’m not saying it’s not better now, it is, but we also don’t rely on men to hunt now. Things aren’t the same. That doesn’t mean everyone disregarded women. Of course some did. Period art shows examples of that as it does now, and by doing that also shows that writers, and consumers, were aware of it.

Or, we could just assume we’re so much better than everyone who came before us, and make sure to signal that all the time and to demand that others do too. And let’s not forget to now make personality-limiting stereotypes (identities) something to be embraced and injected into conversation instead of avoided as old-timers were taught.

March 18, 2023 at 3:58 pm

Jeff

“(5) Everyone meeting the new principal said that he was gracious?

What’s this? He has led to an ambiguity? Inconceivable! Note that (5) wouldn’t be ambiguous with a singular they.”

Just for clarity, why would (5) not be ambiguous with a singular they? It seems to me that it could still be referring either to everyone or to the new principal. Thank you.

March 21, 2023 at 12:10 pm

Gender equity pronouns have rich history of experimentation – Tiger Hi-Line Online

[…] Shakespeare, Jane Austin and C.S Lewis. Singular “they” is currently recognized by APA and MLA. More on how singular they functions in grammar is found here. It is the most common gender-neutral pronoun according to the 2021 gender census and 79.2 percent […]

	On to somethingGOOD!… on The “I’m good…
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Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s correct

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