Chamblee54

A post from “Mental Floss” was making the facebook rounds. The Washington Post Style Guide Now Accepts Singular ‘They.’ The MF post recycles content from The Washington Post, The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’. The WP has a way with words. “But there comes a point when atoms of language change start to form molecules.”
The concept of the gender neutral pronoun is a happening thing. With increasing visibility of trans identified people, pronouns are getting attention. Many people do not like being referred to by the gender of their birth.
Some curmudgeons wonder if every special snowflake should get to choose their pronoun. What if a person wanted to be called kitchen sink? Are we obligated to call that individual kitchen sink, can we use the abbreviation Ks, or should we just tell them to grow up?
To some, singular they is already the standard. The MF post begins by saying “What do you do when you run into your friend on their birthday? You wish them a happy birthday, of course!.” (This is describing the event in third person. If you were to wish your friend happy birthday, you would say you, or the person’s name.) Poynter notes “in general it’s considered more acceptable when ‘they’ agrees with an antecedent that is generic (as in ‘Everyone should return to their seats’.”)
The antecedent issue inspired a delightful comment in the WP. The author was an English 101 teacher, Puget Sounder. “While I may be able to catch the gist of the student commentary, the precise meaning is not always so evident, and I usually end up drawing lines from pronoun to preceding pronoun, desperately seeking the antecedent noun. Like Captain Ahab, I find a lot of candidates, but the “white whale” is often deeply submerged under the jetsam and flotsam of garbled verbiage.”
The seminal WP article had another noteworthy comment. This is from Doctor Dirt. “The singular “they” is far from a no-brainer. It creates more opportunity for confusion, as described below by Puget Sounder, and in other ways. They takes their chances. Bad grammar, colloquialism, or nongender-specific pronouns for a single person? How about “person” instead? Person takes person’s chances. I could get used to that faster than I could get used to “They is sitting in their chair,” and trying to figure out how many people and how many chairs are involved.”
Singular they can cause verb agreement confusion. ST can make you wonder how many butts are sitting in the chair. ST (already used as an abbreviation for Saint) can suggest that the person involved is schizophrenic, or has multiple personality disorder. Employing ST, a plural pronoun, for singular use, is opening a can of linguistic worms.
A gender neutral pronoun for third person use would be an advancement for the English language. In most cases, there is no need to specify gender. Perhaps a contraction of she and it could be used, especially with a southern accent. The sir/ma’am issue will have to wait for another day. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
UPDATE This exchange was on facebook while this feature was being posted: I’m still waiting for Singular Y’all to be approved. ~ I thought y’all was the plural of you. ~ If They can be singular, then Y’all can be singular. ~ That may be the best argument yet against Singular They.