On 2020-07-02 18:19, David Mertz wrote:
On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 12:58 PM Piper Thunstrom <pathunst...@gmail.com
<mailto:pathunst...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> TL;DR: It's not a recent usage; it was OK in 1375.
Forgive me for not giving a detailed play by play of 15 years of
experience specifically as a writer and editor.
Over the last handful of decades, singular "they" has been explicitly
taught as inappropriate. My own college writing classes (only 10 years
ago now) included this specific piece of advice.
My college writing class in 1985 or so DID NOT eschew singular they.
I've been a professional writer for about 30 years now. I am happy to
stipulate that your class in 2010 at some particular college included
an instructor saying "don't use singular they" ... but that was not
uniform across universities in 2010, probably not even across the
entire faculty at your particular school.
I'm 55 yo, and I remember 50 years ago hearing the nonsense claim that
"singular they" is "bad feminists trying to corrupt the English
language." I probably didn't know the 14th century origin of the use
until a decade or two later than that, but this identical discussion
was already extremely old by the time you were born.
In terms of modern English vernacular, singular "they" has been
continuously and rigorously treated as inappropriate.
This is absolutely and categorically false. There have been SOME
PEOPLE who didn't like the singular they, starting about 1820. The
idea never occurred to anyone during the first 450 years of its use.
It has also never been uniform opinion at any point in the last 200
years. But as I say, some text books, and quite possibly your
particular instructor at some particular school, was of that opinion.
Strunk and White, in current editions, does not hold that position.
Those who prefer singular "they", myself included, point to references
very much like yours as evidence that it has a long history of usage.
But until only the last few years, the popular style guides explicitly
forbade it.
Again... SOME guides. Except the ones that didn't do this.`
And if you don't like singular "they", an alternative that I forgot
about is "yon", as in this/that/yon (this near me; that near you; yon
over there by him/her/it). English had 3 demonstratives, as did Latin,
as does Spanish.
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