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by saturn 5296 days ago
The author claims using "they" is common, but grammatically incorrect - then recommends some arbitrary (and currently unknown and incorrect) set of replacement words to be adopted and thus become correct by weight of numbers.

Why not just continue using "they" until it is widely accepted enough to be correct? Frankly, I don't think we're too far off that. The supposedly erroneous example he quoted read fine to me.

3 comments

Yes. Treating 'they' as singular also has precedent in English with the replacement of 'thou' with 'you' as second person singular. Perhaps future Southerners will use 'they-all' as third person plural.
I agree. Especially since all the proposed ones he linked to were horible. For a word to be accepted it has to flow and none of those do.
My thought exactly. We should all just agree that using "they" in that context is grammatically correct, and just call it a day.