Writers should use the singular “they” in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) wh

Writers should use the singular “they” in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) when referring to a specific, known person who uses “they” as their pronoun. – apastyle.apa.org I do not know the gender of the person under discussion, nor do I know if that person has pronoun preferences. I simply followed the "generic person whose gender is unknown" standard. I've been using "they" in this manner for 50+ years. Never had anyone comment on it before. Are you attempting some kind of meta virtue signalling, considering "pronoun preferences" is a very recently added option?