Is a sentence like “I don’t know if they are a male or female, they’ve never told me” correct?
Or is it just incorrect, but common usage?
Grammatically, it’s incorrect to use “they” when you’re referring to an individual. If I said (as Sting did), “If you love someone, set them free,” my old nuns would have rapped me on the knuckles with a ruler.
On the other hand, if I say “If you love someone, set him free,” feminists will snarl that I’m not being inclusive.
So, I’d say the wisest thing is to size up your listeners, and decide whether they’re more likely to be offended by bad grammar or by perceived sexism.
Got it in two, pal. It’s horribly, horribly, horribly wrong, but people do it anyway because they’re scared silly of offending someone.
If you don’t like the “generic ‘he’,” use the "generic ‘she’ "; use “it”; rewrite; alternate. Anything but “singular ‘they’.”
Excuse me, I’m gonna go wash my hands.
You will not easily find a concrete answer here. For better or for worse, “common usage” eventually determines what’s “right” and “wrong” about human communication, regardless of what any stylebook may say.
“They” used as a singular expression actually has a long, if formally unsanctioned, history of use in English. Consider below:
From http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cjacobso/gender.html
That site offers a suggestion:
There are many other suggestions all over the Internet and in print about how best to handle this problem. Another good site is
http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/genpr.htm .
I’m not sure this is true – use of “they” as a singular expression in English far predates social concerns over the equality of women.
WAG is that the real impetus to use the singular “they” was accuracy and inclusiveness.
Son of english teacher (old school) checking in:
the “correct” terminology was ‘his or her’ / ‘he or she’ / ‘his or her’, as in “If everyone would take his or her seat,…”.
Sounds stilted, doesn’t it? “If you love someone, set him or her free” just will not make top 40.
I’m with heathen, that “his or her” is correct. That’s been abbrevriated to his/her or he/she or even (shudder) in the form s/he… all because use of the masculine singular for the indeterminate singular is viewed as politically incorrect
I also agree with heathen, “If you love someone, set him/her free” sounds stilted and cumbersome.
The use of “they” tries to avoid the issue: “If you love someone, set them free” sounds like you’re in some sort of orgy or bigamy to me.
Among the silliest arrangements I’ve seen are legal documents that use “he” in the odd numbered paragraphs and “she” in the even numbered paragraphs. Shudder. The document has a paragraph in legalese that says that use of masculine pronouns shall include feminine pronouns and vice versa.
However, political correctness nowadays frowns on the use of the masculine for the indeteminate.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone just accepted “s/he” for the hypothetical singular?
No. It looks ugly. Furthermore, how are we supposed to pronounce such an abomination?
Also, it’s not a hypothetical singular, but rather a epicene singular that we want.
Personally, I have no problem with the singular-they. Or maybe I should say that the only problem with it is that you can’t use it everywhere you need an epicene pronoun.
But this topic belongs in GD since it has no actual answer. Where’s a moderator when you need one?
I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that if you want to be grammatically correct, you’ll have to sound stilted sooner or later. It’s also unrealistic, though, to expect songwriters, poets, sports announcers, et cetera to be grammatically correct.
One of my english teachers in high school once mentioned that there had been an attempt to create gender-neutral words for people in cases like this; Hir and sie and the like, but that it had never caught on…
Is there a gender-neutral substitute for “his or her”?
I was taught that if the gender is unknown to use the masculine.
s/he is horiable
he or she is awkward but acceptable if you are concerned with offending someone.
Me too, but I managed to unlearn it. (The older I live, the more I unlearn what they taught me in grade school. Right now, the only things I’m still sure I learned in grade school are arithmetic and spelling.)
My view of the singular-they is that it’s not a misuse of the plural pronoun, but rather a new pronoun that happens to share most of the forms with another pronoun. The only form that’s different is the reflexive, where the new pronoun has the form themself. That’s fairly new by the way, it first showed up a mere 20 years ago.
There’s precedence for this. At one time, you was a plural pronoun. In fact, it was just the accusative plural. Eventually, it took over the nominative plural as well as both singular forms. However, it took several hundred years for that to happen, which is how long singular-they is taking to get established.
I estimate that in some 50-75 years, singular-they will be seen as a standard pronoun. Unlike singular-you, it probably won’t take over the singular completely, or if it does, it’ll take much longer than that.
About pluralizing - my Handbook of Technical Writing also suggests:
I’ve written mostly computer manuals, which are mostly “Do this” and “Don’t do that”. But, once you get in the habit of noticing the he/she/they thing, it’s easy to rewrite the sentence in 95% of the cases.
You know, the more I think about this, the more ashamed I am of my language for not having a word that means “she or he.” I mean come on:
My sister just had a child, but I don’t know whether he or she is a boy or a girl.
My sister just had a child, but I don’t know whether he is a boy or a girl.
My sister just had a child, but I don’t know whether they are a boy or a girl.
This is pathetic! I want to be able to say what I want to say. That’s it, I’m changing languages! Which ones have this problem solved?
Acherner whats wrong with “it’s”. I realise it won’t work in all cases, but in your example it does.
My sister just had a child, but I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl.
Don’t they always say “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” ?
How about:
My sister just had a child, but I don’t know whether IT is a boy or a girl.
Seems to me that until gender is known, IT would suffice. But I know that lots of people won’t like calling a person an “it”.
That’s true. For small children and animals, creatures which don’t really have too well-developed personalities, I think “it” is fine. Yes, it would work in my example, but if I had anticipated your response, I could easily have come up with a better one:
My sister just met a new friend, but I don’t know if it’s male or female.
Add two words and it sounds fine to me (though others may disagree)
E.g.
My sister just met a new friend, but I don’t know if it’s a male or female friend.