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Comment by automatoney | Hacker News Reader

Quick reply to your aside: singular they is very grammatical and has been in use for centuries.

From Merriam-Webster: "they has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular they mirrors the development of the singular you from the plural you... and that regardless of what detractors say, nearly everyone uses the singular they in casual conversation and often in formal writing."[1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...

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All politics and grammar rules aside, I personally find 'they' to be really confusing when referring to a specific person.

IE: "is Pat coming to lunch with us?"

"Yes, they're coming in a moment."

Leaves me wondering if 'they' is perhaps referring to some implied group of which Pat is a part, like a SO or team at work (meaning we might need to take two vehicles and get another table at the restaurant) or just Pat.

I wish there was an acceptable non-gendered singular pronoun we could all agree on.

It doesn't solve the pronoun problem but if you haven't heard of them, Grice's Maxims[1] are fun to know about. Basically the idea is that you can generally assume that people you're talking to will follow certain rules, and that allows you to make assumptions. So in your example, you assume that your friend is following the maxim of quantity which allows you to conclude that if there were more people than just Pat, then they would have mentioned the others.

[1] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle

Yeah, but in practice, "they" is used to describe the plural. Singular they might have been in use, but in the modern context, typically only brings confusion. Not to mention screwing with sentence flow.

Singular they are? they is? Both seem pretty offputting to me.

That's confusing because "are" ("they're" is a contraction of "they are") is used for the plural. "They is" would be singular, just like "he is" or "she is". It would be ungrammatical for plural "they", but AFIACT is correct for singular "they".

So the unambiguous (but weird sounding to those unused to it) version:

"Is Pat coming to lunch with us?"

"Yes, they is coming in a moment."

> "Yes, they is coming in a moment."

Perhaps one of:

"Yes, they will be here soon / joining us shortly / along later."

would be better.

> "Yes, they will be here soon / joining us shortly / along later."

None of these clarify singular vs plural of 'they.' All of them work whether 'they' refers to one person or multiple.

Good point.

This is true, but despite this, depending on what writing style or audience you're targeting, singular "they" may still be considered incorrect.

Also if you're in the US, the use of singular "they" can be intertwined with certain politics and legislature, but that only matters for legal documents and government publications.

For casual speech, though, singular "they" is certainly correct and widely used.

Thank you! I'll file that correction in my brain.

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