4 ms·

It is strange and you're right to be confused. This story refers to a known individual, so there's no reason to use 'they', which traditionally is only used for

It is strange and you're right to be confused. This story refers to a known individual, so there's no reason to use 'they', which traditionally is only used for non-specific or unknown individuals (in addition to its standard usage as a second-person plural). It could be a simple error, but I suspect a slacktivist attempt to increase the novel usage of 'they' in reference to specific individuals.

bawolff 5y ago
I'm not really on board with this whole "use they everywhere" thing, but you'd have to be living under a rock to think the usage is novel at this point.
- jlawson 5y ago
  I think you'd have to be very young to think it's not novel. Natural language changes on this scale are usually very slow; singular and specific 'they' has only been getting pushed for a couple years (basically since Obergefell in 2015). Note that this is separate from singular and nonspecific 'they' which is much older.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    I don't really think novel just means "recent" but also has a connotation of non-standard or an idea that hasn't really caught on yet.
    - jlawson 5y ago
      It is non-standard and hasn't really caught on outside of your bubble. Most English speakers are much further from the direct influence of gender activists.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        I mean, the APA styleguide says to use it https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/si... AP styleguide also says its acceptable. I don't know that it gets more standard than that when it comes to english. That it has even caught the attention of style guide authors at all is enough to move it past the "novel" stage in my mind. I'm not claiming its universal (after all, english has a ton of variants) just not novel at this point. Compare to something like "xe", which i would call novel as its pretty far outside the mainstream.
talideon 5y ago
Or alternatively, the use of 'they' reveals less information about the person in question.

bawolff 5y ago

I'm not really on board with this whole "use they everywhere" thing, but you'd have to be living under a rock to think the usage is novel at this point.

jlawson 5y ago
I think you'd have to be very young to think it's not novel. Natural language changes on this scale are usually very slow; singular and specific 'they' has only been getting pushed for a couple years (basically since Obergefell in 2015). Note that this is separate from singular and nonspecific 'they' which is much older.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I don't really think novel just means "recent" but also has a connotation of non-standard or an idea that hasn't really caught on yet.
  - jlawson 5y ago
    It is non-standard and hasn't really caught on outside of your bubble. Most English speakers are much further from the direct influence of gender activists.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      I mean, the APA styleguide says to use it https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/si... AP styleguide also says its acceptable. I don't know that it gets more standard than that when it comes to english. That it has even caught the attention of style guide authors at all is enough to move it past the "novel" stage in my mind. I'm not claiming its universal (after all, english has a ton of variants) just not novel at this point. Compare to something like "xe", which i would call novel as its pretty far outside the mainstream.

talideon 5y ago

Or alternatively, the use of 'they' reveals less information about the person in question.