Statement of dogma

[prog]

I've actually been doing it for a while, now, but I'm going to go ahead and state it for the record:

Henceforth I will use the pronoun they (them, their) when I wish to refer to a person in the singular without specifying their gender. ← See? I just did it. That wasn't too awful, right?

Ten years ago I hated this usage. Now? It's like a warm bath.

Comments

Re: Funny, I've gone the other way

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

This is how I understand the argument.

"They" is plural. "Everyone" is singular. Using "their" to refer to "everyone's things" creates a mismatch.

I'm afraid I'm not persuaded by numbers when it comes grammatical arguments.

However, I'm not trying to tell you how to conduct yourself grammatically. For a few more months, it's still a free country.

The last thing I want to spark in internet debate.

Re: Funny, I've gone the other way

[radtea.livejournal.com]

The question is why you believe "they" implies plural. From a discussion linked by someone else here, the following authors all used a singular "they":

Anthony Trollope
Charles Dickens
C. S. Lewis
Daniel Defoe
Edmund Spenser
Edith Wharton
Frances Sheridan
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Bernard Shaw
George Eliot
George Orwell
Henry Fielding
H. G. Wells
Jane Austen
John Ruskin
Jonathan Swift
Lewis Carroll
Lord Byron
Lord Dunsany
Maria Edgeworth
Oliver Goldsmith
Oscar Wilde
Percy Shelley
Robert Louis Stevenson
Rudyard Kipling
Sir Walter Scott
The translators of the King James Bible
Walt Whitman
W. H. Auden
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Shakespeare

So if quantity (the OED standard) doesn't convince you of the correctness of the singular "they" perhaps quality will.

And if neither quantity nor quality convinces you, perhaps utility will: where are the cases where the singular "they" is confusing? I have never been confused by it even back when I believed it was a gramatical error. My lack of confusion, which appeared to be shared by everyone around me, was one of the things that convinced me there was no problem with.

I'm agnostic on grammar, mostly, so I'm not trying to dictate to anyone either. But I am interested in pointing out what I think is the most consistent position and why, and letting everyone else do their thing.

Re: Funny, I've gone the other way

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Do you have citations for all these authors?