Do's and don'ts for singular 'they'

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Facebook endorses your rule:

"DO use they to refer back to an individual of unknown gender, or whose gender you do not wish to reveal."

If a user doesn't specify their sex, FB refers to them with "singular they." I first noticed this in an ambiguous example, which I think are rare with singular they. A friend had posted a picture and the FB tag was "NAME has posted their picture of the day." I first interpreted this as referring to my friend and her family since it was a family picture.

-Matt Gordon



On 3/4/10 9:20 AM, "Neal Whitman" <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET> wrote:

On Visual Thesaurus: What would school grammar textbooks say about 'they'
with a singular antecedent if it hadn't suffered from 200 of stigmatization?

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/2193/

Neal Whitman
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org