What They Is
As clients and I discuss matters of style for their material, one subject that comes up is which pronoun to use when the gender of the antecedent is in question. Almost always, they insist on the use of the masculine pronoun as the epicene; if a pronoun is needed and the gender in question, I’m asked to use he, him, his, etc.
Their decision is based on their desire to stay out of a political discussion surrounding gender identity. Whatever their personal opinions, they don’t want their business to be seen as taking sides.
The best way to stay out of that discussion is, in their minds, by strictly adhering to the rules of grammar. By simply applying the rules we all learned in grade school, they won’t be seen as favoring one side or the other.
I agree that making an unnatural choice here – a choice that doesn’t follow the rules of English – would imply a political stance.
Where my clients and I disagree, however, is in what the rules are regarding singular they, and whether the proper epicene in English is masculine or derived from a plural word.
A plural pronoun at a single’s party
Staunch prescriptivists hold that they requires a plural antecedent.
All three boys loved opera: they went every week.
Here, “all three boys” is the plural antecedent of “they.” Without some other context, we wouldn’t say:
All three boys loved opera: he went every week.
The second version only makes sense if some additional context makes clear that we want to single one of these boys out of the three.
But what about:
Our informant loved opera: they went every week.
Here, “our informant” is singular. A prescriptivist would say that it requires a singular pronoun – “he,” “she,” or possibly “he/she” or “(s)he,” etc. – to make it clear that the antecedent is singular.
However, the use of they to denote an antecedent of unknown or mixed gender is almost as old as the word itself. They was borrowed from Old Norse sometime in the 13th century. We began to use it as a singular pronoun as early as the 14th century.
While this use of singular they is old, the movement against it isn’t much younger.
To understand why the rules against singular they exist, and why we shouldn’t obey them, we need to understand where those rules came from.
A brief history of the English language – abridged
The 17th century was a time of change. The Renaissance was ending. England was dominating the world stage both militarily and commercially. And the Scientific Revolution had begun.
In England, the Royal Society was first chartered in 1660. They concerned themselves with the study of nature and the teaching of science. And we can easily imagine the likes of Sir Isaac Newton (president of the Royal Society from 1703-1727) attempting to grapple with the laws of science, and feeling that both languages available to him – English and Latin – were inadequate to describe his findings.
We can also imagine members of the East India Company (founded in 1600) wanting to better facilitate trade across their global empire – but refusing to learn the languages of the many natives they dealt with. And we can imagine those natives – also hoping to facilitate trade – needing to learn English.
It was in this zeitgeist that people first began to concern themselves with English grammar. For the first time, scientific literature was being written in French and German and Russian and even English. To ensure that the intended meaning was understood by the reader, a new precision was needed in the language.
At the same time, English colonialists needed a way to facilitate the education of their language to people as far away from each other as India and the Americas. There are arguments about whether this was for military purposes, commercial purposes, or with the intent of exporting English culture. Likely, the right answer is a mix.
William Bullokar published the first English grammar book in 1586. His text was – we would think appropriately – in English. But for the next century, most English grammars (and there were a lot of them) were written in Latin. Latin was the language educated men used when they wanted to be taken seriously by other educated men.
It isn’t hard to understand why these people privileged Latin in this way. They hadn’t even yet discovered the periodic table of elements: of course they would struggle to apply the scientific method to something as nebulous as language.
Books on English grammar, written by men who’d been educated in Latin to think that Latin was the language of the intelligentsia, tried to force Latin rules on the English language. In Latin, infinitives couldn’t be split because they were one word. So it was decided that English infinitives shouldn’t be split either. In Latin, sentences don’t end with prepositions, so they applied the same rule to English – even though in English sentences can and do end with prepositions.
From this heyday of misguided Latin-centric prescriptivism, the idea that the masculine form should be used when gender wasn’t known was pushed onto an unsuspecting populace.
Our linguistic family tree
English students the world over have struggled to follow the prescriptivist ideas still taught by their teachers for one simple reason – these Latin-based rules are being forced onto a Germanic language.
Languages can be thought of as existing in families. There was a grand-parent language called Proto-Indo-European. Its speakers, it’s thought, migrated to different parts of the European and Indian subcontinents. Their distance geographically isolated them, and their languages developed in that isolation.
Over centuries, the language spoken by people who travelled to the British Isles became Celtic. People who travelled to north-central Europe spoke a language that become Old German, which then became Old Norse (in Scandanavia) and Old English (after the Anglo-Saxons successfully invaded the British Isles, sometime around the 4th century AD).
German as a language family has a life of its own, separate from Latin, with its own rules and needs and allowances.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, William Bullokar and his ilk didn’t know this. They simply tried to apply the best rules they knew to the language they used.
Grammar school students still suffer the consequences today.
A prescription for clarity
We can do better for English students than forcing into their education the rules of a dead, distantly related language. We can simply teach the rules of English.
In the search for a non-gendered pronoun, there are many good arguments for choosing singular they.
When the antecedent is unclear
When the gender of an antecedent is unknown, singular they can bring a clarity of intent.
Our informant loved opera: they went every week.
Here, I’m imagining a situation in which someone – an officer, journalist, or attorney, possibly – is speaking of an informant. They don’t want to reveal any clues – such as gender – about who the person is – and so they use singular they.
Prescriptivists would argue that this use muddles the issue by bringing to question whether it was more than one person, or a single person, who went to the opera every week.
However, the context (“our informant”) makes it clear that the number is singular. The speaker’s intent is to not reveal details, and using “he” or “she” would imply something about the informant they may not even intend, and that could be construed as misleading.
Instead of confusing that issue, the speaker’s use of singular they makes it plain that gender is a detail they aren’t disclosing.
For simplicity’s sake
Singular they is also often used with non-specific antecedents, including everyone, anyone, nobody, somebody, and person, as well as job titles, positions, etc.
Everyone uses singular they – they don’t even realize when they do it!
I’ve heard good things about our new principal, though I haven’t met them.
This use is pervasive, natural, and, according to studies, easier to read than other options[i]. In 1997, Foertsch and Gernsbacher did a study showing, in part, that when used naturally, singular they was “read much more quickly than clauses containing a[n unexpected] gendered pronoun.”
If your goal is to create compelling text that people will read, then making this kind of choice – the one that allows them to read more quickly, without confusion – is the right choice. Let the grammarians worry about prescriptivism vs descriptivism. Our jobs are to communicate with our audiences in a way that is natural to them.
Sexism
There is good evidence that when people read or hear a masculine pronoun, they assume it applies to a masculine subject. And so feminists the world over have been right to complain.
But we don’t need to dig into those weeds. We can see that singular they is the right choice because of the clarity it brings to our sentences.
For example:
The doctor gave the keynote address – he did a great job.
As I’ve said, and especially in a world that has embraced singular they, readers will infer this is talking about a man. But this becomes truly problematic in a sentence such as:
After the address, each doctor – including Victoria – kissed his spouse.
Prescriptivism here has obligated us to refer to a clearly female person by a masculine pronoun.
Even worse, though, are constructions such as:
If Debbie or Jim were drowning, I’d throw him a rope.
While a strict, prescriptivist grammarian could insist on the use of the masculine form, it would make them look like they were so sexist as to let Debbie pay a visit to Davy Jones’s locker!
The use of singular they, on the other hand, would better express what was meant and felt – that each doctor kissed their spouse, and that either Debbie or Jim would be saved regardless of their gender.
Singular they is accepted
…even by those who oppose it!
In a discussion of singular they, NPR’s Geoff Nunberg discusses Mary Norris’s book Between You & Me. In her book, Norris argues against singular they, claiming it to be “just wrong.” But as Nunberg points out, Norris herself used singular they in a book about grammar that argued against its grammatical use!
I’ve seen this same exercise done with a number of prescriptivist grammarians. They argue against the use of singular they, but at the same time use it themselves. For their detractors, it’s a simple exercise to find those uses and show the hypocrisy.
A similar exercise is often done in which singular they is looked for in the texts of well-regarded authors. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Austen are all well-cited for having used it; probably, every writer who wants to be taken seriously has.
…and also by those who make the rules!
The APA, the Chicago Manual of Style, the AP, and Merriam-Webster all either support or condone the use of singular they – both as a means of gender inclusiveness and non-specificity. The same is true for most major publications, whose style guides are based on one of these sources.
It’s okay to use they
Businesses that hire me often want to avoid entangling themselves in the political discussion of singular they and non-binary gender identity.
What they don’t realize is that, because their choice of a masculine epicene isn’t actually the choice people make when they need a gender-neutral pronoun, their insistence acts as a dog whistle. Singular they has a long history. Breaking from that tradition means weighing in on the political discussion – usually in a way that wouldn’t have been chosen if all the facts had been known.
The way to stay out of the political discussion, and to make your content better, is to write in a way that is natural. That – in this case – is in keeping with how the word has been used for hundreds of years, and is still used today.
If our goal is to write with clarity and a natural tone, this is one of those tools we need to pull back out of the closet that our well-meaning, misinformed grammar school teachers put it in.
[i] Foertsch, J., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (1997). In Search of Gender Neutrality: Is Singular They a Cognitively Efficient Substitute for Generic He? Psychological Science, 8(2), 106–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00691.x
