3 ms·

I think the rule is "it's okay to use they as a singular for individuals with known gender" and while that rule might not make it into styleguides (yet) I see i

I think the rule is "it's okay to use they as a singular for individuals with known gender" and while that rule might not make it into styleguides (yet) I see it regularly in actual speech. "You two, stop fighting" "But they started it!"

bloak 3y ago
"It's okay" isn't what I mean by a "rule": I'm talking about the kind of "rule" that tells me (or any other speaker) when to use "they". There certainly are people using "they" when they know the gender, but they don't use "they" in every case, as far as I can tell, so presumably they are following some kind of rule with conditions in it (because people don't, in practice, choose pronouns at random).