ALT TEXT:

  • Panel 1: A person with the text “Singular ‘they’” written on them smiling with open arms.
  • Panel 2: “Singular ‘They’” beaten up by others who said, “Singular they is ungrammatical. It’s too confusing,” “How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular,” and “Every pronoun should only have one purpose.”
  • Panel 3: “You” hiding from the mob who was beating “Singular ‘They’”
  • Panel 4: “German ‘Sie’” hiding with even more fear next to “You”
  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    I have normally used “they, their and them” when referring to a singular person for about twenty years because I thought that “he/she” and “his/hers” looked ridiculous in emails.

    For example; “Next time the engineer feels like he/she needs to overhaul the code…” versus “Next time the engineer feels like they need to overhaul the code…”. Clean and simple.

    Example of current use:

    Bob - “Hey Jo, Frank thinks we should tweak widget X.”

    Me - “Yeah well, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”

    I don’t think that sounds weird.

    • DharkStare@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      Singular they sometimes works and sometimes it sounds odd. It usually sounds off when used by itself without following something explicitly singular.

      “The customer forgot their wallet. Can you bring it to them?” sounds correct but if you just do

      “They forgot to pay their bill” it sounds like you’re referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.

      Edit: Changed to a better example.

      • Neato@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        “They left their wallet on the table” it sounds like you’re referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.

        Does it? If multiple people left multiple wallets on the table, it would be, “They left their wallets on the table.” Multiple people can’t really leave a single wallet behind. Or at least that would be very unusual and unintuitive.