I'm wondering what you think about the use of the "singular they" in our Constant-Content articles and writing in general. In case you have no idea what I'm referring to, here it is:
I don't recall seeing anything in the Writer's Guidelines about it [edit: I'm wrong, here at CC you ARE supposed to avoid it according to the guidelines and Purdue OWL, so I'll continue to follow that rule around here], but I've always followed pronoun-antecedent rules in all my articles just to be on the safe side. That, and it just kind of irks me to see the "singular they" in print But I'm seeing it used by professionals all the time now...
Anyway, what do you think about it? Acceptable?
Last edited by BennyTheWriter on Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
Personally, I almost always use it. It's standard here in the UK and I find it much friendlier than always typing "he" and feeling crappy about excluding women. Silly and politically correct, I know, but it really does bug me.
When I was in college, one of the style books (I don't remember if it was MLA or APA) had started suggesting using "they" as a singular pronoun, so I've been using it even though it irks me at times. It *is* more convenient in some cases.
The main time I feel compelled to use "they" in the singular is with companies. Companies in the U.S. are generally considered singular, therefore 'it" is used. For example, Google just updated *its* browser. In my mind, I think of companies as plural (as in lots of people make up the company) but grammatically my thinking is incorrect (in the U.S.). I want to say that Google updated *their* browser because I'm thinking of all those Google engineers working to tweak it. I think, but could be wrong, that the U.K. does the opposite with companies. The way I get past this is to think of the company (or group or team) as a unit made up of members. The company released *its* newest update. The company's employees are proud of *their* contributions.
As far as referring to an individual as "they" -- I can't stand it. It's not that difficult to work around. For example take this original sentence which is awkward and incorrect:
* An employee might be worried about his or her health benefits and how they will pay for the increasing premiums.
Could be changed to:
* An employee might be worried about health benefits and how to pay for the increasing premiums.
or
* Employees might be worried about health benefits and how they will manage increasing premiums.
If you're writing in broad, general strokes, it's easy enough to pluralize the noun to match the pronoun. In other cases, a few minor tweaks to the sentence can usually resolve it. Also, if you set up your he/she sentence properly, it's not overly jarring to include genders in my opinion. For instance:
If you've just hired a college graduate and she's concerned about starting a new job without health benefits, you can blah blah blah. Another new hire might be concerned about his access to training and blah blah blah blah.
If you're not comfortable with the specifics above or alternating genders, then either tweak or pluralizing the nouns or both:
If you've hired college graduates with concerns about health benefits or access to training, blah blah blah.
I know language changes, but I'm not ready to embrace they as singular even though I get why it's becoming popular.
But I'm seeing it used by professionals all the time now...