Singular They
One of the biggest challenges for any writer of English is the singular third-person pronoun. The according-to-Hoyle correct way to refer to an unknown actor is to use the masculine versions of the various pronominal forms: he, his and suchlike. Unfortunately, all those pesky feminists have taken offense to this convention, leading to any number of clumsy alternatives: hyphenation (his/her), alterating male and female pronouns or even creative but ugly hybrids (hiser, anyone?). My favorite is to avoid the singular altogether: “users like their software lean-and-mean,” rather than “a user prefers his/her software lean-and-mean.”
Well this Language Log post confirms what I’ve long believed: using the plural forms (they/their) to refer to singular antecedents is perfectly kosher in modern English. If it’s good enough for “esteemed writers”, it’s good enough for me. So I’m going to adopt this in my future writings, and language pedants be damned. Who knows, I may even start splitting infinitives one of these days.
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