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Stylebooks Finally Embrace the Single 'They' (cjr.org)
Two major style manuals are now allowing the singular use of "they" in certain circumstances. While this is a victory for common sense, the paths taken are unusual in the evolution of usage. From a report on Columbia Journal Review: Both manuals, the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, emphasize that "they" cannot be used with abandon. Even so, it's the middle of the end for the insistence that "they" can be only a plural pronoun. To recap: In English, there is no gender-neutral pronoun for a single person. In French, for example, the pronoun on can stand in for "he" or "she." English has no such equivalent; "it" is our singular pronoun, so devoid of gender that calling a person "it" is often considered insulting. We could use "one," but that is a very impersonal pronoun. Consider this sentence, for instance. "Everyone needs to be sure to tighten ____ safety belt before approaching the cliff." The article adds: For hundreds of years, anyone writing formally would default to "he." Advances in women's rights led to the clumsy "he or she." Many writers alternate "he" or "she." This twisting and turning is because what's known as "the epicene they" has been considered incorrect. [...] But that's not the "they" the style guides have let loose. Simply, the singular "they" will be allowed if someone prefers that pronoun.
That's to he or she who finally decided this!
How is this related to tech in anyway whatsoever?
"Everyone needs to be sure to tighten __their___ safety belt before approaching the cliff."
"In French, for example, the pronoun on can stand in for "he" or "she." English has no such equivalent; " ...
"We could use "one," but that is a very impersonal pronoun."
I hate to disagree, but 'one' is _exactly_ the same thing as the french 'on'.
They words even have some sort of resemblance, don't you think?
Everyone needs to be sure to tighten he safety belt before approaching the cliff
Everyone needs to be sure to tighten they safety belt before approaching the cliff
Nullius in verba
Heh. For half of Indo-European population that learned English as a second language, speaking as one of those people, it's more of a constant confusion than anything even resembling common sense.
Ezekiel 23:20
In the linked article, the example given, “Carly cleared their voice and spoke”, feels awkward and ambiguous. I never thought I'd prefer usages like "his or her", but compared to the example, I do.
Don't step on the baby.
Singluar they has been used at least since Shakespeare's day.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One wonders where one's language went.
I'll write however I damn well feel like.
Go ahead, no one is stopping you.
Who anointed these people to be the arbiters of the English language?
No one, they're simply making a suggestion, in fact, their business is making suggestions. You're free to ignore them just like we're free to consider their guidance.
I stole this Sig
Everyone needs to be sure to tighten one's safety belt before approaching the cliff.
Perhaps the pronoun "one" matches "Everyone"?
Also, how about this: Everyone needs to be sure to tighten the safety belt before approaching the cliff.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is nonsense. "He" has always been the default in English when the gender is unknown or not relevant.
French using "on" is no different than referring to an unknown person as "one" in English. We don't use "one" that way very often because it doesn't sound right because we're used to using "he" instead. Of course it sounds impersonal, it's not using "he" or "she". It's meant to be impersonal!
You know what? I just checked my map, and Chicago isn't even *in* England. What do they know about English? This is an outrage!
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
"Advances" in women's rights
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I'm not sure I'd agree with the word "writing formally". It used to be the default from the times when it was absolutely impossible to avoid grammatical gender in inflected words in English, especially verb forms and indeterminate pronouns. Hence it was used when both when writing and speaking, both informally and formally. Such is still the situation in all the IE languages that have kept this pervasiveness, such as Slavic languages (definitely) and I think many Romance languages as well.
Ezekiel 23:20
Grammar. Just saying.
That's why I would probably say "Make sure your student brings the f***ing book to class." in style.
Nope. Everyone is a singular pronoun.
No, actually "everyone" is indeed singular, hence it should be "everyone needs to be sure to tighten his safety belt". Albeit "their" sounds quite acceptable to me here. But if you'd say "Everyone are here" (pretending it's indeed plural), that would sound wrong to me. :-).
But in any case, I'm not a native speaker, so what sounds ok to me may not be the right answer
Yeah, that's what immediately came to mind for me, certainly not "Everyone needs to be sure to tighten he safety belt before approaching the cliff" as the article suggests. They probably mean "his" but it's just a really poor example because of "everyone".
Better perhaps; "The Dean of Medicine gave a scathing speech this afternoon." "Really? What did ____ say?".
Not only is that a common example where people's unconscious bias would insert "he", but it's a perfectly acceptable place to say "they" in speech for an individual.
And for illustrating this actual argument; "The prom queen is dressed unusually" "Why? What _____ wearing?" in that sentence "are they" makes no sense, unless the prom queen is conjoined twins.
Correct, nobody cares what offends you. And while this clearly offends you, nobody cares.
>"Consider this sentence, for instance. "Everyone needs to be sure to tighten ____ safety belt before approaching the cliff."
Sorry, that is easy and was solved hundreds of years ago and without using "his". The answer is "one's".
"Everyone needs to be sure to tighten one's safety belt before approaching the cliff."
...is newspeak for the word newspeak.
Dictionaries, stylebooks or some government bureau (in the case of the pompous "Académie française") do not and cannot create (nor steer) the language. At best, they merely document and codify the language that emerges. You don't need any stylebook or dictionary to define "LOL" before you can use it, nor should you use it just because they documented it.
It other words, this news has little bearing on what people actually use or will use.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
That's why I would probably say "Make sure your student brings the f***ing book to class." in style.
Their you go, teaching kids about sex. Next thing you know their doing it...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"On" in French is a bad example -- "on" agrees with masculine conjugations and endings, not feminine. And French is a bad example in general, since so much of the language is gender-laden. Try getting a French person to remove the destinction between "le" and "la", replacing it with something else ("lo"?) -- and replace all masculine/feminine dimorphism in the language with some new generic ending. That will take you far.
I love people who complain when faced with nobody forcing them to do anything at all.
"Old man yells at systemd"
That's to he or she who finally decided this!
I think you mean "That's to the one who decided this". English already has a perfectly good third person singular, gender-neutral pronoun, 'one', which you can use when referring to people as opposed to things.
"Everyone needs to be sure to tighten __their___ safety belt before approaching the cliff."
And that would be what most people would actually produce.
The trap that stylebooks had evidently fallen into is to assume that the rules of grammar in English are as they are written in textbooks.
This is incorrect; the rules of grammar in any language are what native speakers produce. If a native speaker produces it and, on introspection, insists that it is correct then it is, by definition, correct.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You've changed the direct object to an indirect object, so, you're changing the case.
--Jim (me)
I'm curious, what do you think the appropriate answer is to that last example?
And for illustrating this actual argument; "The prom queen is dressed unusually" "Why? What _____ wearing?" in that sentence "are they" makes no sense, unless the prom queen is conjoined twins.
If you assume sex with due to the mention of "queen", replace it with, "The winner of the prom is dressed unusually", or "The prom winner ...".
I think that's a good example of the need for a gender neutral singular pronoun other than they. You can fill it in with: ... but the "are they", due to the verb, implies a plural (unless I'm mistaken).
* is she
* is he
* are they
* is it
* is he or she
I don't see how "one" would fix this example (I guess you could say, "what is this one wearing", but that's pretty clunky).
You could avoid the issue at hand, and just refer back to the noun ("What is the queen wearing"). Maybe that's the best answer?
The person referred to is the indirect object of the sentence in both versions since the "hooray" is being sent to the person. There is no change of case.
Oops, reading the parent more closely, yeah, my bad, you're right. But... that parent should be "That's to him or her," and that's what made me jump so bloody fast on the case! Oops.
--Jim (me)
I don't think that's a general statement you can make. It is true in English, much to the chagrin of English teachers everywhere, but there are absolutely languages where there is a body empowered to decide what the correct grammar is. I believe, France is rather notoriously defensive of it's académie française. That's not to say that everyone, especially in speech, does what they say but that there actually is a correct way to do things.
Do it my way or you're a bigoted, cisgendered, racist, homophobe. Just to be safe refer to me as Overlord.
BTW, my solution to "he or she" in writing was to simply add a slash - "s/he". One extra character and the same number of characters as "they". Unfortunately there's no way to pronounce it, so when speaking I usually use "they".
Don't even get me started on the silly rules about punctuation inside or outside quotation marks, which prioritize conformity over meaning.
The Spanish language is loaded with masculine/feminine forms which are intrinsic to the grammar. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about the evils of gender in Spanish?
It could be "is he", "is she" or "is it", or even some other gender neutral pronoun construct, but you'd have to know the person to know what their pronouns are; which is why this stuff is so fraught, I shouldn't need a pronunciation guide to avoid offending people, but while "it" /should/ be acceptable, it is not.
You can't replace "queen" with "winner" because there is also generally a "king" and neither of them "win" the prom.
I can't help read, "What is the queen wearing?" in Chandler Bing's voice with appropriate comedic/searching pauses; "What is ... the .. queen wearing?"
"We're approaching a cliff. If you don't want to die horribly, fasten your seatbelt."
-- Alastair
"Xhe" looks like you're trying to write Chinese. Or perhaps Mayan.
-- Alastair
"It" is not only gender-neutral, it is also species-neutral and even animate-vs-inanimate neutral.
The latter two have a tendency to offend humans of whatever gender (or sex).
-- Alastair
Nous, on pense that "on" can mean "each of us."
Most languages come with masculine/feminine baggage. In French, you have to magically know that a book is masculine and a shirt is feminine. In English, things don't have a sex ("the" / "it" / "that"), but the right answer for the prom example is technically, "what is he wearing?". That's what it is in the English language.
So, IMO, this is a proposal to change a rule. If we're changing the language, I'd prefer not to overload and muddy the definition of the perfectly good pronouns "they", "their", "them", etc. That's why I asked what would be appropriate for that example. As you noted, it could be "is he", "is she", or "is it". IMO, none of those hit the mark (assuming the goal is to remove the masculine preferred). This is why we need a new series of words (ex. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki..., or https://genderneutralpronoun.w...). Bastardizing the use of "they" is broken, but I guess that fits with all the rest of the "rules" of the this language... no point in being logical now :-)
Do the people so outraged by the singular they also insist on still using "ye" and "thou" on account of "you" being purely a plural pronoun?
People who have an issue with the singular they don't know how good they've got it. In Germany, you have to add both genders to the articles, the adjectives and the nouns. Thus: Der neuer Mitarbeiter soll sich ausweisen. (The new employee should identify himself.) Becomes: Der/die neue/r Mitarbeiter/in soll sich ausweisen. I wish I was making this up. I don't know what kind of genius came up with that brilliant solution, completely ignoring the simple fact that "Mitarbeiterin" is still just a derivation of "Mitarbeiter" that is the default male position.
Yes, the AC has proved his point about the difficulty of learning English by demonstrating that even they* does not know proper English usage, even though they* are self-acknowledged English experts.
*Note that "they" in the above sentence is appropriate under even the more stringent style guides as there is insufficient data in the context to determine if the antecedent of the pronoun is a male with hemorrhoids or a female with PMS.
The Dean might be woman. There is not enough context to tell. So "What did they say?" is the best choice.
The prom queen might be queer. So "What is they wearing?" is completely appropriate.
We now live in a world where there are more than just two genders. That alone is reason enough to use "they" as third person singular in all those instances where the gender cannot be determined by the preceding context.
the right answer for the prom example is technically, "what is he wearing?".
Umm no? There's no "masculine preferred", also style guides are not "the English language", they're usage guides for the language; "What is she wearing?" is perfectly correct if they happen to be a female queen.
As to style guides, here's part of the 2006 version of the AP guide mentioned:
transgender Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.
If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.
So you either get told he or she, or pick one based on how they "live publicly", which doesn't work for everyone.
But now, from a WaPo memo:
It is usually possible, and preferable, to recast sentences as plural to avoid both the sexist and antiquated universal default to male pronouns and the awkward use of he or she, him or her and the like: All students must complete their homework, not Each student must complete his or her homework.
When such a rewrite is impossible or hopelessly awkward, however, what is known as “the singular they” is permissible: Everyone has their own opinion about the traditional grammar rule. The singular they is also useful in references to people who identify as neither male nor female.
What we really don't need is a "new series of words", what we need is people who are a vanishing proportion of the population to get proportional attention. Now, that's not to say if they're a friend or a colleague you can't learn their pronouns as a courtesy, but to suggest everyone everywhere at all times needs to stop and ask what your pronouns are is too much effort and just feeds the ego of people who insist on such accommodations being made.
You may disagree, in which case I would like you to henceforth refer to me as "Lord Zaelath, first of Zher name".
No. "What is they wearing" is not English, unless you're an "Asian" caricature in English popular culture, in which case more correct is "What is they wearing, Blud?"
I don't think that's a general statement you can make. It is true in English, much to the chagrin of English teachers everywhere, but there are absolutely languages where there is a body empowered to decide what the correct grammar is. I believe, France is rather notoriously defensive of it's académie française. That's not to say that everyone, especially in speech, does what they say but that there actually is a correct way to do things.
Its not up to governments or institutions, thats the whole problem. Its up to the community of native speakers. How they use the language is the language.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I think that
"The prom queen is dressed unusually."
"Why? What are they wearing?" seems like perfectly good English in this case.
The more I look at it, the more I agree. Though some people would suggest you're casting them as multiple people with "are".
I'm not sure there is an example where you can't replace "is it" with "are they" in English, albeit several style manuals would disagree.
The last business writing course I saw insisted that conversational English was preferred anyway, yet still had an opinion on the Oxford Comma; they didn't like it.
As someone else has pointed out, "they" has been used as a singular for some time (see singular they). Also, the second person plural "you" is used as a singular in exactly the same way (i.e. it's grammatically plural, we say "you are", not "you is", but can refer to a single person), and even the the first person plural "we" is sometimes used as a singular (i.e. the "royal we"). Since this covers all the plural personal pronouns, it is arguably consistent, in a way. :-)
I recall that in IASFM (yes, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine), Asimov once wrote an editorial which covered this subject. Although I don't have that anymore, I think I recall the gist of it pretty well. He noted that a number of science fiction writers over the years had attempted to invent gender-neutral pronouns for the English language, but none had ever gained any traction. Asimov then pointed out that English already had gender-neutral pronouns that work just fine, in the form of "he" and "his". It's rarely difficult to tell from the context when they are being used in a gender-neutral way. The awkward "he or she" construct was a solution to a non-problem.
So, I think I'll stick with Asimov on this. However, I have to admit to being stodgy in my writing habits. I still refer to The Elements of Style (which Asimov also recommended), not to mention Webster's 2nd Edition (the "dord" dictionary), and I still capitalize God (yes, even when He is referred to by pronouns), and I still believe that "flammable" is not a real word and shouldn't be used outside of warning labels that must be understood by semi-literates.
Well, I care to the extent that it results in someone who cares more than me derailing the discussion. So in an effort to give said people less of an excuse to do so, I tend to use "they".
Someone had to do it.
Hm. I would expect "gost" to be a soft O, more like "gossed". For an alternative to ghost, the closest you could get is goast maybe? (No, don't point out that gold, gopher, and gory are counter-examples, I can't hear you.)
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
The royal we: only me.
The plebeian we: everyone but me.
Royal: we will go now.
Plebeian: we will clean up this room.
The irony is deep here. The pedantic eschewing of the standard usage of he as a neutral pronoun in English is, well, lessened by not understanding the significantly more important usage of italics when incorporating words from a foreign language. The neutral pronoun in French is on (OHN, pronounced more like the start of unknown than onomopoetic).
If you are going to be pedantic about things, then get it right, please. The submitter and, more substantially, the editor have embarrassed themselves here.
Vastly more important to the community here, what the heck is this doing on Slashdot? What remote relevance does this have to do with anything technical? Is there a CPU involved? Any transistors, even? A neato new technology? Some keen new technical observation? A fantastic scientific discovery? An impressive use of technology? This morning's news feed (on another site) describes how a common laborer's face from Medieval times has been recently reconstructed, who, to my eye, looks startlingly familiar and modern. Why is that not on Slashdot, as cool use of technology, instead of this SJW puffery?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Is "themself" a word, or should we use "themselves" still?
I do not come were to be brainwashed into the new stupid political correctness gone wrong.
As others say, this is NewSpeak.
P.S. I have not forgotten to post as "AC".
Fuck you all.
You are allowed to use "are" with a singular, such as "what are you wearing?" when referring to just one person. For some reason everyone seems to forget that usage when quibbling over singular they!
However, while I'm perfectly happy to use singular they (and frequently do), I wouldn't start combining it with "is".
Just use "she" and "hers", no guy will seriously feel excluded and we're not going to stay away from computers or STEM jobs because of it.
I find this is the correct answer to a lot of grammatical questions I come across. If I'm proofreading something and it just doesn't sound right, or I can't figure out which exact words to use due to an unusual set of circumstances, just rewording the phrase or sentence usually solves the issue.
The next step in improving English is to return to the older usage of second person singular with singular verb forms. "You is pedantic" was once common and continues to be in use in relict dialects of English as spoken in some isolated communities of southern Appalachia and near the headwaters of the Suwanee River. When Pogo said "We have met the enemy and they is us" (circa My Lai Massacre, 1968) Walt Kelly was using the appropriate verb form to show "they" was the third person singular whose antecedant was "enemy". In much the same way in the construction, "You is an obstinate, pedantic obstructionist" the singular form of "to be" clarifies that "You" is being used as second person singular pronoun. The "You is a buffoon" construction deserves to be brought back from the relict dialogs into mainstream English. Millions of English-as-a-second-language people (who now greatly outnumber native English speakers) would thank us for doing that.
I could go on, but that was sufficient to make my point, and to deliver a bazinga or two to boot.
This person (allegedly) killed one woman and wounded another, but Berkeley is mad because the media keeps using the "wrong" pronoun for "they"?
http://www.berkeleyside.com/20...
http://www.dailycal.org/2017/0...
Some person started yelling at me in olde english the other day. I have no idea what one wanted.
Someone had to do it.
"In French, for example, the pronoun on can stand in for "he" or "she." English has no such equivalent"
'One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun, meaning roughly "a person"'
You cannot <action I'd rather you didn't take> but I'll go ahead and warn you off anyhow.
Requiem for the American Dream
As an undergraduate, I had Set Theory class taught by Paul Halmos (yes, *that* Halmos).
On the first day, during his introductions, he suddenly veered into grammar. He addressed the ignorant statement as put forth in the quoted text above that "To recap: In English, there is no gender-neutral pronoun for a single person."
First noting that some languages have a pronoun for persons of unknown gender, he finished with "English is such a language. The word is 'he.' So you will forgive me if I do not say 'he or she' throughout this course."
He was (and remains) correct. "He" and "him" do not imply gender in English unless context indicates otherwise.
hawk
The stylebooks are recognizing that certain people identify specifically as "they" meaning they don't identify as male or female. This is not the same as the thing many of us find logical, using "they" instead of "he or she."
Basically, grammar rules, along with a number of other taught behaviors are used to signal class in most English speaking countries.
Thou dost make a point, but I think I'm going to ignore it, as it's now non-standard English, I'm sure thou wilst agree. Art thou from the US? because none of thine examples are from the UK.
Basically, grammar rules, along with a number of other taught behaviors are used to signal class in most English speaking countries.
Too true
I have a relative who speaks received pronunciation consistently 100% of the time. She was born and raised in the slums of London.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
This is like saying the Russians who were sent off to Siberia were getting "reeducated".
The fact is the euphemists and word snobs are gradually saying you can't use the words "he" or "she" anymore.
Language has always reflected (or atleast approximated) the connotations and interests of ordinary people and the elites want to corrupt it.
Why are we applying Stalinism to language?
Yeah because that isn't sexist at all. How about default to whatever the author wants to use? Typically, women would use 'she' and men would use 'he.' Problem solved, and it does not require ugly changes to the language.
..and what you're missing is that we shouldn't muddy the language for the sake of peoples' sexual fantasies.
So, we *do* have a neutral pronoun, they (plural) just don't like it.
"One" is more impersonal than "they"?
But the problem with standard English is that it does not exist, has never existed, and is becoming ever more unreal as more and more ESL users force English to grow faster than any language has ever grown before. "Standard English" has never been spoken outside of the classroom, with the exception of talking heads and radio announcers who were trained to use it for sometimes several minutes without a break., and got big paychecks for being able to pull that off. We are now close to the point where more ESL users are using English to get around their lack of a common native tongue than there are native English speakers who are talking to each other. When Chinese businessmen are negotiating deals with Russians, Argentinians, Vietnamese or anyone else who doesn't speak the common Chinese dialect, they do so in English. When a Finn, an Italian, and a Sumatran collaborate on a software project, they use English.
To repeat: the only place where "standard English" has ever existed is in the imagination of grammar nazis. In the real world, so long as you can be understood, your English is considered on a par with everyone else's, no matter how mangled it may seem to a grammar nazi.
Well, as I have learned recently if that principal's gender identification is non-binary, then it is correct to say "What did they steal?"
Part of this change is probably to accommodate these gender identifications.
...was stabbing a pretty, young school teacher five times in the heart! What progress!
According to a number of grammar texts, that's true. In normal usage, "he" is masculine wherever it appears.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If the Academie keeps it up, Standard French will wind up being a dialect only used by the government and other such organizations. You can't freeze a language that's in everyday use by a large number of people.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
To be honest, I've been translating from English for a decade, for money, and this is the first time even I see "reasoning" like the one you're displaying in the second paragraph. I've seen group plurals for institutions, and I've seen singular they, in both less or more fortuitous usages, but this is the first time ever I see anyone justifying singular they of an authority figure with an institutional plural. Maybe you should push it into textbooks so that us dumb foreigners could learn it at your level of detail.
Ezekiel 23:20
What really puzzles me about attitudes like this is why. What is it to you if someone identifies as nonbinary? Why do you insist on knowing the genetic makeup, or at least the genitalia, of someone before talking about them? "They" has been in common use as a third person singular gender-indeterminate pronoun for centuries, and it seems convenient for those who don't identify as male or female.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes