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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> The last notable ban was Paul Graham for simply sharing their Mastodon handle.

Paul Graham is a man, not a plural entity.

Singular they predates singular you in the English language by about three hundred years.

That doesn’t mean the “they” here isn’t unclear. I wasn’t sure whose Mastodon handle Paul Graham shared. I certainly didn’t think OP meant he shared his own handle.

To be perfectly pedantic, this should only be confusing if referring to the Mastadon employees. Otherwise, if referring to the non-person entity, singular or plural appropriate syntax would be “it”.

How do you know that? I know singular they goes a long way back, but this is an extreme claim that I've never heard before.

They originated around the same time, but singular you was initially only used for addressing superiors/showing respect (using the plural second person pronoun as a singular for this purpose is still a thing in a bunch of languages), a few hundred years later “you” became the standard second person singular pronoun while “thou” fell out of favour.

"the suspect jumped in their car and fled the scene"

In English the word can be used as a singular pronoun

John jumped in their car...

Right, so if you change it, then it's changed and it's different.

Appreciate the clarification

Yes, I suppose changing things changes them. Appreciate the redundancy.

Good observation! Hope this wasn't an attempted, and failed, grammar 'correction'?

A very modern convention is now using “they/their” when a person may not be aware of someone’s preferred pronoun. And even still, I have also seen people abandon gendered pronouns entirely.

It’s also just far easier to use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular person to reflect the idea that you’re talking about their whole persona, brand, work, etc… and not just specifically the human being, IMO.

It's also a very old method. In fact, he/she is a later evolution of the English language. "He/his" used to be more equivalent to "it/its". It wasn't until ~15th century that the modern "he/him" and "she/her" fully evolved. "They/them" meanwhile was in full use by the 14th century

No one speaks in middle english. Dead language rules and customs are irrelevant to modern language norms.

People once walketh befide their mules, but now we gots lambos

And yet, pronoun ragers cleave to Olde Anglishe in an attempte to rectifye Ye langge. Sadge.

This train of thought makes no sense. The fact that something originated in Old English doesn't at all mean it's dead. He/She also originated in Old English, just a little later. Should I make fun of people using he/him, she/her pronouns because they're "clinging to Olde Anglishe"? lol

No one made that claim.

Your comment is non sequitor

Using they/them as a neutral pronoun is not dead and never died...

Ah, "neutral"

Non-binary people tend to prefer the they/their pronoun too.

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