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<h2 class="">Witnessing a Rule Change: Singular ‘They’</h2>
<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2015/12/They-mug.jpg"><img class="" alt="They mug" src="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/files/2015/12/They-mug.jpg" height="384" width="288"></a>I
have a new favorite mug. It was given to me by the graduate students in
the Joint Program in English and Education (JPEE) and celebrates my
advocacy of singular <i>they</i>—with the explanatory <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/05/10/singular-they-a-footnote/">footnote</a>.</p>
<p>But when can we stop including the footnote?</p>
<p>We got one step closer two weeks ago, when Bill Walsh, chief of the night copy desk at <i>The Washington Post</i>, sent <a href="http://theslot.blogspot.com/2015/12/acknowledging-inevitable.html">an email</a> to the newsroom announcing some changes in the style guidelines. In addition to eliminating the hyphen in <i>email</i> and endorsing the spelling <i>mic</i> over <i>mike</i>, his email gave in to singular <i>they</i>
as “permissible” when rewriting the sentence to make it plural is
“impossible or hopelessly awkward.” Walsh also noted the usefulness of <i>they</i> when referring to people who identify outside the male-female binary.</p>
<p>Walsh’s email — and more specifically the part of his email about singular <i>they </i>— made headlines, including an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html">article</a> by Bill Walsh himself. John E. McIntyre, night content production editor at <i>The Baltimore Sun</i> and a long-time advocate of singular <i>they</i>, published a nice <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/language-blog/bal-there-they-go-again-20151207-story.html">piece</a> addressing some of the common objections to singular <i>they</i>. And Arika Okrent, blogging at <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/72262/washington-post-style-guide-now-accepts-singular-they">Mental Floss</a>, predicted that other news organizations will follow the <i>Post</i>’s lead. I would guess she is right.</p>
<p>This is how rules change: one style guide at a time. And often cautiously. Walsh does not wholeheartedly embrace singular <i>they</i>.
He frames it as a permissible last resort when there is no way to get
around the need for a generic singular pronoun. When nothing terrible
happens — readers are not confused by singular <i>they</i>, if they even notice it, and no one cancels their subscription to the newspaper over it — singular <i>they</i> will become an ever more standard option.</p>
<p>It will take a while for widespread acceptance of singular <i>they</i>
among English teachers and copy editors. After all, some of them are
still strictly enforcing the rule about not splitting infinitives, and
that was cautiously accepted by Oxford and others some 20 years ago. But
I think it is fair to say that singular <i>they</i> now has its foot
solidly in the door of acceptable English usage. Or, to change the
metaphor, the gatekeepers of formal English usage have cracked open the
gate.</p>
<p>As a historian of the English language, I have accepted this cautious creep toward acceptability, even though <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/04/10/singular-they-again/">there is nothing grammatically wrong</a> with singular <i>they</i>
other than the fact that people say there is something wrong with it.
It makes sense that the dissipation of long-established grammar and
style rules takes time.</p>
<p>As a professor of English and a copy editor, I am one of the
gatekeepers when it comes to what counts as “acceptable” in formal,
edited prose. I am doing and will continue to do what I can to speed
things along: I voted “completely acceptable” for all the sentences with
singular <i>they</i> on the 2015 usage survey for <i>The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language</i>; I will continue to use singular <i>they</i>
in my own academic writing; I talk with students about the debate in
class; and obviously I can’t seem to help but blog about singular <i>they</i> here. The next step is to assume that my readers will see singular <i>they</i> as standard enough (e.g., in the line above about no one canceling their subscription) that it merits no special comment.</p>
<p>I have decided to keep the mug and drop the footnote.</p><p><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/12/16/witnessing-a-rule-change-singular-they/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=3e23320d25b54be8a5d1d84c432bdc6e&elqCampaignId=2090&elqaid=7264&elqat=1&elqTrackId=785f274b118a415fa5a2d8f70c5e96d3">http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/12/16/witnessing-a-rule-change-singular-they/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=3e23320d25b54be8a5d1d84c432bdc6e&elqCampaignId=2090&elqaid=7264&elqat=1&elqTrackId=785f274b118a415fa5a2d8f70c5e96d3</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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