4 ms·

This strikes me as circular.

• late2part 9y ago
  Your comment strikes me as circular.
• danans 9y ago
  > the waiter messed up because they're a jerk That's a subordinate clause where "jerk" is referring to the waiter, not the main subject, hence it's not circular.
  • ams6110 9y ago
    And people think singular "they" is OK in writing. Try: the waiter messed up because he's a jerk.
    • PrunJuice 9y ago
      "They" is generally accepted as a singular gender neutral pronoun.
      • jon_richards 9y ago
        And has been since the Canterbury Tales! It's a modern development that it isn't considered "correct" English.
        • Normal_gaussian 9y ago
          600 years is long enough for me
    • yorwba 9y ago
      That's not a unique problem of they: "The man shoved the waiter because he was in his way." Pronouns only have a few bits of information, everything else has to be inferred from context. (A big problem in natural language processing.)
    • tatterdemalion 9y ago
      This doesn't do anything at all to resolve the ambiguity in this sentence.
    • tnone 9y ago
      If this is such a problem, do you think it's a problem too that English doesn't distinguish between singular and plural you?
    • oddlyaromatic 9y ago
      Here's a short review on the use of the singular "they". It is OK. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbinary-they https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...