On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 10:25 +1100, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > Daniel A. Welty wrote: > > > * "they" and "their" are plural, and should never be used in the singular. > > Thank you for sharing your option here, but you are not a linguist and > you are simply wrong. > > At least two people in this thread have already linked to Wikipedia's > article on singular-they, which has extensive discussion about its > validity, complete with references, as well as more accessible > discussions written by professional language experts like Michael > Quinion or Geoffrey Pullum. In case you missed them the first few times, > here they are again: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they > http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-the2.htm > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.html > (corrected broken link given earlier) > http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/ > http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/192/is-it-correct-to-use-their-instead-of-his-or-her > > As for your prescription for solving this problem: > > > is for the speaker to assume that the person of unknown gender is > > the same gender as they are. > > As *they* are? > > Thank you for your accidental demonstration that the use of singular > they is a natural and unobjectionable part of English language. Is playing gotcha REALLY necessary? I believe singular they should not be used in formal writing. So what if you use it in an email?
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