[Ads-l] Word of the Year 2015: singular "they"

[Tom Zurinskas]

I googled "binary people" and found -- Non-binary people may also identify as transgender and/or transsexual.  So what is a binary person?  straight?  I are not understanding what they is.
Tom Zurinskas,  Originally SWConn 20 yrs,  college Tenn 3,  work NJ  33,  now FL 12.The need for truespel phonetics - http://justpaste.it/truespelnow 


 
> Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 06:29:19 -0500
> From: bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Word of the Year 2015: singular "they"
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Word of the Year 2015: singular "they"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Here's my writeup of the WOTY voting for Vocabulary.com:
> 
> http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wordroutes/they-won-gender-neutral-pronoun-is-2015-word-of-the-year/
> 
> The selection is also receiving plenty of media coverage...
> 
> http://time.com/4173992/word-of-the-year-2015-they/
> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-word-they-named-2015-word-of-the-year-2016-1
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/08/donald-trump-may-win-this-years-word-of-the-year/
> http://www.inc.com/chris-matyszczyk/the-new-word-of-the-year-is-going-to-upset-some-people.html
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:41 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The Word of the Year for 2015 is "they" used as a gender-neutral
> > singular pronoun. "They" was recognized by the society for its
> > emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often as a
> > conscious choice by someone rejecting the traditional gender binary of
> > "he" and "she."
> >
> > Read the press release:
> > http://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-year-is-singular-they
> > Shortcut to PDF: http://bit.ly/ADSWOTY15
> >
> > --bgz
> 
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