[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by riverkid

rewboss: Nobody's denying that the "singular they" went out of fashion due to a prescriptivist rule. Mike's point is that the fact that it was acceptable in Shakespeare's time does not, in itself, mean that it is acceptable today.

Mike's point, Rewboss, is a complete red herring. Note how he, and now you, zoomed in on Shakespeare and completely missed "Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H. Auden, Lord Dunsany, George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis".

The fact is that, rightly or wrongly, most people today find the "singular they" unnatural and odd.

And you know this, how? You two are great at opinions but I must point out that you fall awfully short when it comes to sources or proof.


That's not because they're deliberately following some prescriptive rule, it's because that's the way they've always used the language. You suggest that students have to have the "singular they" actively drummed out of their heads, but that's simply not the case; few people write or speak that way in the early 21st century, and that's a fact.

I don't follow your line of thinking here, Rewboss. Could you perhaps explain just what your point here is?

A finite list of authors who have used a particular construction has some merit. Nevertheless, you are ignoring an equally long list of authors who carefully avoid the practice. That reduces the subject under discussion to a matter of opinion/taste/preference. I have no problem with that. On a forum where students come asking for the "correct" way to do things, I think it is important to give those students answers that will be most acceptable to their teachers and others. Nobody will be penalized for avoiding the singular "they" (provided they do so in an acceptable way), but some students will be penalized for using that form. I often mention that many consider the practice to be acceptable, but many others do not. Then, I often introduce strategies to avoid the use. That seems to me to be honest and fair. Let the students hear all the opinions; then let them decide.