I don’t know what the rules are anymore, with all the sensitivity out there nowadays. But I have always used “their” in the case you describe and nobody has given me any shit for it yet. And, actually, in this quickly changing world in constant flux, I really don’t care enough to keep up anymore with the latest whine.

It seems to me that, thanks to the net and the most insane shit going viral on social and vid sites like YouTube, anyone without bona fides can influence the way we express ourselves and this opens us up to egomaniacs without portfolio complete with a personal agenda to influence us simply in order to serve their own shit. Even academics are subject to this. That’s why they have peer groups.

My Rule: If I personally don’t agree with them and until an editor demands otherwise, I will continue to express myself as I wish. Also, ad populum arguments don’t work with me. The world is often wrong. Just take a look at it.

So, just because a bunch of people feel offended somewhere by something someone says or writes doesn’t mean they are right and it doesn’t mean the rest of the world must drop everything and apologize, then revamp the fucking language.

If somebody is insulted by the way I express myself and the words I use, I simply just stop communicating with them if I don’t agree. Fuck ‘em.

I put this in the “fuck ‘em” file until otherwise convinced by an authority such as Webster or Oxford.

The writer goes on to say that “their” has become the acceptable usage and that language has evolved. You’re focused on the fact that they said “he” is practical but that’s not all they really said.

Yeah I read it against @janbb and I only focused on that one bit. And he doesn’t think it should be that way. My bad.

I don’t think singular they is anywhere near as complicated as people make it out to be. While I agree with him that “his or her” is clunky and cumbersome—not to mention it reinforces a gender binary that erases the plethora of nonbinary people struggling for recognition. The Associated Press has taken steps to acknowledging singular though, and while they defer to reframing a sentence to avoid the necessity of third-person pronouns whenever possible it’s a step in a good direction imo

I use they/them pronouns. I have to argue for validation in doing this because it’s more than words to me—as it was more than words to feminists pushing back against default he. This is not a phenomenon of English as many other cultures are pushing for inclusion of more pronouns to reflect the complexities and variations of identity.

There is no need to “make” singular they correct. It has been an accepted part of the English language since the 14th century (which means it was standard English before there was such a thing as standard English). It appears in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Thackery, and even the King James Bible. Those who reject singular they are engaging in hypercorrection.

The singular “they” is more than acceptable, and while I’d expect someone from a less enlightened generation to use “he” as a gender-neutral, anyone living and learning now should be using gender-inclusive terms.

It was someone on Wisdm long ago who told me I shouldn’t use “they”

They were wrong.

I prefer “it”.

I think “their” is odd, but I’ve started using it. I still write “he/she” sometimes too. I also use just “he” sometimes. I’m all over the map.

I wish “he” could be used for male or female, or some other singular choice, but at this point people seem to really find it politically incorrect, and I understand why.

I wish I could remember which texts and where so I could pull up examples, but I remember reading texts (for classes) and being surprised to find the gender pronouns would switch between male and female while referring to the same person, often in the same paragraph, and sometimes even the same sentence. My professors said, basically, that the writers just weren’t as worried about gender-matching the pronouns. Either pronoun would work to refer to a person, so they were both used, and it was no big deal.

It was actually a bit confusing the first time I encountered it (since gender divisions are so rigid in today’s pronoun usage), which I think is why the gender flipping of pronouns stuck in my mind but detached from its sources. I saw it most often in medieval texts—I’ll try to remember an example. This was in times when spelling wasn’t standardized, either. Grammar rules have gotten more strict over time.

Not that I recommend that kind of back and forth today. People would get confused. I just find it interesting that pronoun gender was, at one point, such a nonissue that people didn’t bother with consistent pronoun gender for an individual within a single text, let alone as a sweeping habit across texts.

Along with the singular “they,” I know of many people who will write “she,” or who will deliberately alternate between using “he” and “she” (alternating works well when there are adjacent instances of default pronoun use). There’s also always “one,” which is a bit stiff-sounding, but gender neutral and short.

Plus, as @SavoirFaire said, singular “they” has been in use for centuries.

Personally, I’ll use whatever makes sense. Usually, that’s “they.” But if I’ve already got a plural “they” in a section of text and for whatever reason need a singular default pronoun, I’ll try to remember to use either “he” or “she” for clarity. Or if I’m using several default pronouns for whatever reason, I’ll deliberately use different ones, again for clarity. (And if for whatever reason the style of the writing demands I use “one,” well, fine. I’ll do it.)

I don’t think that everyone who uses the default “he” is being misogynistic, but I don’t think that “just being practical” is really a reason to stick with the practice. I think that’s more about never giving a thought about it. There’s nothing impractical about using “they” or “she”... and trying to move away from only using “he” was about more than simply finding the use “insulting.” “He” was an easy default when society’s structure ensured that men were more likely to be the readers of texts, and more likely to be whoever the text was talking about. That assumption no longer made sense when women started gaining more equal representation, and again less sense as we start to challenge the cultural attitude that gender is rigidly binary—defacto use of “he” is no longer the most practical.

I disagree with switching between he and she in one story when you’re talking about one person. The purpose of story telling is to make things as clear and linear as possible. Doing that destroys clarity and just leaves the reader confused and uninterested.

I was taught to use the “their” singular back in the 60’s by Irish nuns in English class. It always made sense to me. It’s a lot less cumbersome than the alternatives—and more correct than the old generic “he”. But I still catch myself using “man” for all humans, which I believe to be incorrect.

My husband tends so go off on long, rambling stories about work. They’ll go something like this.

“I had a meeting with the maintenance guy, the machine guy and the supervisor. The supervisor started the meeting then he said, “So, what’s in this for us?” And the 2nd guy said, “Yeah, what’s in it for us?” and he said, “What we mean is, how will this benefit us?” and then he said, “how much is it?” He goes, “We were quoted $40,000 by Atlas Copco in 1925.” Then he goes “We felt it was too high then, and it’s definitely too high now.” Then the other guy said, “You know, guys. We weren’t even alive in 1925.”
SO, I am left so confused and scratching my head that I just quit listening.

@Espiritus_Corvus I say “human kind,” usually. But I do use “man,” as in “then man discovered how to control fire.” but not as much as I used to. Because it was probably a woman who discovered how to control fire. I’ll often say “We,” instead.

@Espiritus_Corvus if it helps, “man” use to be gender neutral, before it acquired a second usage as “male humans only,” and then that second usage took over the meaning.

The Usage section on the Oxford Dictionaries entry for man and this short Today I Found Out article both cover this briefly.

I discovered this fact when I had access to oed.com and was having some fun clicking through word etymologies. Since then, I’ve kind of wanted to start a return of using “wapman” or “wereman” for male men. I think it’d be fun, and it might help return “men” to its original gender-neutral state! ... But since “man” does mean male-human today, I tend not to use it, either, when referring to all humans.

@Dutchess_III—I wasn’t trying to advocate for it. I just thought it was interesting! It would be confusing today. Apparently it wasn’t then.

I remember when it was fine, like in the 60s. It started to change in the 70’s. My first recollection of it was with the word “Mailman.” We were supposed to start saying “Mailperson.” I think we tried. But it didn’t stick.
Maybe we should go with “Mailmale” and “Malefemale.”

^^ Letter carrier seems to fit the bill.

I’m partial to particularity. I’ve re-imagined the start of Coleridge’s famous poem about another old sailor, made palatable to the tastes of the day…

They are an ancient Mariner,
And she stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.’

She holds them with its skinny hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth they.
‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’
Eftsoons its hand dropt they.

He holds her with one’s glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath its will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
She cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘The ship was cheer’d, the harbour clear’d,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came she!
And they shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

And so forth, and so on.

@CWOTUS I can only assume that you haven’t actually read the question or any of the responses because that does not, in fact, have anything to do with what is being discussed here. The topic is pronouns when the gender is unknown. The gender is not unknown in that poem.

Well, not exactly. They are an ancient mariner. How many ancient mariners are there? I think three. Male and female. Like one female and two male?

@Dutchess_III In the original poem, the line that @CWOTUS has turned into “They are an ancient Mariner” is “It is an ancient Mariner.”

@SavoirFaire, you may as well take up with Coleridge. How could he that one have assumed the genders of the mariner, or the bride or groom, for that matter? By the profession of “mariner”? By the presence of a beard? Because he Coleridge invented the person himself themself (themselves?)?

My point is that I have written “he” in the past, attempted to change to genderless or inclusive pronouns more recently, and now I’m just saying, “Screw it. Language is meant to communicate ideas, and if someone takes the idea from me – if it were up to me to write The Rime today – that I perceive most ancient mariners to be men, then so be it. That is how I see it, so that’s how I’ll write it.” I’ve also written for “her” (and other cases of the third person singular female) when the speech called for that or that was the audience.

And yes, I did read the question and most of the thread that followed.

I think using third person plural pronouns to skirt the issue of gendered “he” and “she” (and other cases) because we can get away with that (in English, anyway – can’t get away with that in Spanish, that I know of, and perhaps other European languages, too, to say nothing of other world languages) is an abomination – and won’t help translators.

@CWOTUS If you read it, then you don’t appear to have understood it. Even your attempted snarkiness with the strikethrough text shows that you either don’t know what we’re talking about (in which case you should take the advice of Wittegenstein given in Tractatus 7) or that you are being deliberately obtuse to make some sort of nonsensical political point.

Singular they is not used to skirt gendered “he” and “she.” No one is arguing that those terms are inappropriate when the subject is know to in fact be a “he” or a “she.” It is used to avoid using a gendered term when the gender is unknown. It is a way of avoiding error in the case of uncertainty. And, in some cases, it is a way of avoiding error in the case of someone who is neither a “he” nor a “she.”

Coleridge invented the characters. He knows their genders. But sometimes, we don’t know the genders of the person or people to whom we are attempting to refer. And in other cases, the people to whom we are referring cannot appropriately be referred to by either “he” or “she” (making the “he or she” construction also incorrect). This is not a difficult concept.

The issue of translation is also an extremely poor argument. Leaving aside the fact that perfect translation is impossible (see, for example, the work of Willard Van Orman Quine), you fail to consider the ways in which having a gender neutral pronoun in English helps us to translate to and from languages that also have such pronouns and the problems that would occur when translating to and from those languages without one.

Yes, I do know the topic and I do understand it, thank you very much. I am neither ignorant nor stupid nor obtuse. Despite what they all say about me.

If there were a workable third-person singular non-gendered pronoun in English – aside from the generally inanimate or at least impersonal “its” – and sorry, “they” isn’t he, that’s got another perfectly fine job as a third-person plural – then I’d be happy to use ‘er. But there isn’t, so I don’t.

@CWOTUS—there’s always “one,” if you want: one, one’s, oneself? When one wants to avoid using a gendered, singular pronoun for a person of an unknown gender, and one does not like using “they” for that role (or alternating between “he” and “she,” etc.,) this option is always available to oneself. Stylistically, I prefer “they,” but that’s just me.

They are an ancient Mariner,
And she stoppeth one of three.

One of the three what?

@Dutchess_III: Wedding guests. The mariner is sitting on a stone outside the bridegroom’s door. The narrator of the poem happens to be one of the wedding guests walking past the mariner, and happens to be the one that the mariner stops to share this story with. Instead of going inside to the “feast” and the “merry din” and all the lightheartedness of wedding celebration—as the rest of the guests are doing, and as he wants to do himself—he is held by the mariner in an almost trance-like state to hear the story. Full text here.

The three who the ancient mariner stopped are wedding guests? And the ancient mariner is a she?

@Soubresaut I use “one” sometimes, but I save it for more uppity posts.

The ancient mariner stopped one guest. That character was “one of three” guests walking past the mariner at the moment the mariner grabbed him. In other words, it was the luck of the draw that this particular character was pulled aside by the mariner to hear his tale (and ultimately be changed by it). The ancient mariner and the character he pulled aside are both male.

Also, belated edit for above: I misspoke when I said the wedding guest was the narrator, he’s not.

@Espiritus_Corvus was just messing with us!

@CWOTUS “Yes, I do know the topic and I do understand it, thank you very much.”

Then why did you say that there isn’t a workable, third-person, singular, non-gendered pronoun in English? There is, and there has been for centuries. But let’s run through it step by step. Your criteria were (1) workable, (2) third-person, (3) singular, (4) non-gendered, and (5) pronoun. I take it that there is no argument over “they” being third-person, non-gendered, and a pronoun. So that leaves two remaining criteria upon which to base an objection: workable and singular.

You haven’t defined “workable,” but the context suggests you mean something like “practical” or “feasible.” Assuming that is correct, the fact that “they” has been in continual use as a singular pronoun for as long as there has been such a thing as standardized English—and even before then!—seems like irrefutable evidence that it is workable, as does the fact that it is incredibly common in ordinary speech (so common that the American Dialect Society declared it their word of the year in 2015).

Indeed, it wasn’t until the 18th century that even one single grammarian started questioning its use, and she was an outlier until the 19th century (in no small part due to later grammarians plagiarizing her work). Furthermore, the trend of rejecting singular they lasted a scant 80 years among grammarians (barely a blip in the life of a language) and has been out of fashion for more than half a century. If anything is unworkable, it is the rejection of singular they as an acceptable mode of speech.

So this leaves “singular” as the sole criterion upon which to base an objection. But wait! Singular they—as distinguished from plural they—is, by definition, singular! It is defined as singular, and it is used as a singular pronoun. Yet there is nothing beyond definition and usage that a reasonable person could want as evidence that singular they is, in fact, singular. Moreover, there are no non-circular arguments to support singular they not being singular.

The argument that “they” is morphologically plural, for example, simply assumes that “they” is not singular (or that there are not two forms of they—one singular, one plural—which act as homonyms). And while some may find this confusing, it is no worse—and is in fact better—than the case of contranyms (such as “sanction” or “cleave”), which mean contradictory things. At least singular and plural they are both third-person, gender neutral pronouns.

Perhaps the best case that can be made against “they” ever being singular is that the word is associated with plural verb forms even when used to refer to a single object. But singular they is not unique in this respect with regard to the English language. The subjunctive mood can also generate unusual combinations of subjects and verb forms, including plural verb forms with singular subjects (though this is often obscured in modern English due to the simplification of verb forms over time).

@Dutchess_III That’s fine with me.

What is?

@SavoirFaire LOL. If you have actually read any Wittgenstein, you would be the only other person IRL or on the net that has read him other than myself. Points for that.