Or is it just weird to use they/them? Thanks
As recently as 15 years ago, using "they" to refer to a single individual was derided by many as grammatically incorrect. It was common in colloquial speech, but frowned upon in writing, mostly because it increased ambiguity. The thinking was that if you accept "they" as a third person singular pronoun, then sentences like the following would become unclear: "Sally and her friends went to the mall, then they left".
Of course, this is correct: singular "they" is ambiguous, and often frustrating. But it's what we've ended up with. The recent acceptance comes down to two factors: linguistic descriptivism finally overshadowed linguistic prescriptivism, and non-binary gender identity (and concern about accidental misgendering) became more prominent.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages...
(^ Note the "Spivak pronoun". Courtesy of the same Michael Spivak who wrote Calculus on Manifolds.)
(In this case, we know that Marak is man, so the whole thread is likely just trolling attempt.)
>"When an applicant notifies the other residents, they must lodge a section 12 notice within 14 days."
("They" can refer to either the singular "applicant" or the plural "other residents".)
Isn't ambiguity the point of using such a pronoun?
I'm curious what the 'recommended' strategy was for situations where gender was unknown. "Someone robbed me; he or she took my wallet"?
However, it's _also_ ambiguous with respect to quantity of people it refers to (singular or multiple), i.e. the "Sally and her friends" example. Does "they" refer to Sally, or the whole group? Having a a separate "singular-they" word available would disambiguate.
> The recent acceptance comes down to two factors
Here is a couplet from Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors" (1623):
> There's not a man I meet but doth salute me
> As if I were their well-acquainted friend
And the King James Version (1611) of the Bible has this for Deuteronomy 17:5:
> Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
And these are not fringe publications, but some of the most widely-distributed texts in the English language. That makes singular "they" even older than singular "you"! I find it hard to understand the justification for opposing singular "they" even from a prescriptive perspective.