[stupac2]

I really don't get the consternation. Singular "they" was considered proper English 50 years ago, at least in the NJ public schools I attended. According to the Economist article, it has been used for hundreds of years. As a native speaker of a language in which non-gendered pronouns are normally used even when the gender is known, the insistence on gendered pronouns strikes me as strange. I put it in the same category as insistence on using "one" in stead of indefinite "you" in casual conversation, an affectation I had not come across before arriving at Stanford for law school.

Check out the peeves section on Language Log, most peeves are actually perfectly acceptable English that was used by celebrated authors for hundreds of years, but some dude somewhere decided was bad so now people blindly follow. It's all really silly.

[stupac2]

I really don't get the consternation. Singular "they" was considered proper English 50 years ago, at least in the NJ public schools I attended. According to the Economist article, it has been used for hundreds of years. As a native speaker of a language in which non-gendered pronouns are normally used even when the gender is known, the insistence on gendered pronouns strikes me as strange. I put it in the same category as insistence on using "one" in stead of indefinite "you" in casual conversation, an affectation I had not come across before arriving at Stanford for law school.

Check out the peeves section on Language Log, most peeves are actually perfectly acceptable English that was used by celebrated authors for hundreds of years, but some dude somewhere decided was bad so now people blindly follow. It's all really silly.