Singular "they" on Facebook

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Dave Wilton wrote:
>
> My apologies if this has been mentioned before...
>
> I've noticed that Facebook, and probably other social media applications,
> uses the singular "they" when the person's sex has not been indicated. As in
> "Jane Doe changed their profile picture." The software will use "his" or
> "her" when the person has indicated their sex in the profile. If one does
> not do so, then it uses "they."
>
> Just another example of the usage spreading.

Facebook's singular "their" was noted on Language Log back in 2007:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004449.html

A year later, there were indications that the usage was going to be
phased out, but that evidently did not come to pass:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=281

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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