[untog]

"patrickfl didn't bother to read the article, as a result they were uninformed."

[g4k]

This may be right, but it does not sound right.

[Afton]

It's not right. There are linguistic restrictions on gender-neutral, singular 'they'.[1] When the referent is known, it can't be used (i.e. it's not about 'patrick' and 'he' matching up, it's about 'they' not being usable with a known person).[2]

My favourite real-life example of it's usage is one in which we know that the gender is female, and we know it's singular:

"If a mother wants to use the nursing room, they can just key in the code in their pamphlet".

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/3cgbyv/limitat... gives some good discussion

[2] I can't help but feel that these restrictions are related to nondefinite contexts for "(negative polarity items)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarity_item]", like 'no-one' and 'any', where you can't say e.g.

    *I ate any cake

but you can say:

    I didn't eat any cake

but you can also use it in questions:

    Did you eat any cake?

This seems related to usages like

    If someone comes, tell them to wait

vs

    *If John comes, tell them to wait.

[dang]

It doesn't sound right because the username includes "patrick", which implies a "he". Singular "they" doesn't replace "he" or "she" when gender is known.

It sounds a bit more natural if you say "That user didn't read the article, so they were uninformed."

[warfangle]

> Singular "they" doesn't replace "he" or "she" when gender is known.

It does when the gender identity of the subject is known to be neither he nor she!

[untog]

Why not? This is not new at all, I've used it whenever I'm not sure of the gender of a subject for as long as I can remember.

[corysama]

"...they was uninformed."

I'm not a fan. If we have to go somewhere, I'd rather go with 'it'.

[dang]

That would be awful, but is a misunderstanding. People say "they were" for the singular, just like "you were" (not "you was").