4 ms·

'their' is plural and therefor would be grammatically incorrect

• akavi 13y ago
  Are you a native English speaker from the United States or the UK? If so, I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that if I were to record you speaking, it'd be less than an hour before you used 'their', 'they', or 'them' with an unambiguously singular antecedent. Singular 'they' is pervasive in English, and has a long and storied history.
• petercooper 13y ago
  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100184652/if-someone-tells-you-singular-they-is-wrong-please-do-tell-them-to-get-stuffed/ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/10018465...
• dragonwriter 13y ago
  > 'their' is plural and therefor would be grammatically incorrect No, while "their" is grammatically plural which affects verb conjugation (e.g., "he goes" vs. "they go"), its use for cases which where the antecedent is singular in number and indefinite in gender is well-established English usage which long predates the Latin-inspired prescriptivist attempt to erase such usage and was never seriously diminished in use despite that prescriptivist effort. In English as it is, rather than English as some lovers of Latin wished it would be, "they" is perfectly correct for this use.
  • 727374 13y ago
    Ok, thanks for the correction. I was not aware of the storied history of plural they. I rarely, if ever, see this pattern in professionally edited writing, though. Is it just me?
    • gruseom 13y ago
      You likely see it all the time and don't notice it. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"has+their" https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Abbc.co.uk+"has+their" https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+"has+their" https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anytimes.com+"has+thei... https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aguardian.co.uk+"has+their" https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aguardian.co.uk+"has+t...
  • pjungwir 13y ago
    I've never seen this claim before. Do you have any citations of singular them/they/their that you consider predate this prescriptivist effort?
    • gruseom 13y ago
      There are countless examples, including from Shakespeare ("and every one to rest themselves betake"). See the lists at http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html and http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/sing_they_sli.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/grammar/sing_they_sli.pdf. More citations at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6058643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6058643.
      • 727374 13y ago
        Anything from the 21st century from, perhaps, a respected newspaper?
        • dragonwriter 13y ago
          The 2011 revision of the New International Version of the Bible, because: The gender-neutral pronoun "they" ("them"/"their") is by far the most common way that English-language speakers and writers today refer back to singular antecedents such as "whoever," "anyone," "somebody," "a person," "no one," and the like. Even in Evangelical sermons and books, where the generic "he," "him" and "his" are preserved more frequently than in other forms of communication, instances of what grammarians are increasingly calling the "singular they" ("them" or "their") appear three times more frequently than generic masculine forms." http://www.biblica.com/niv/accuracy/ http://www.biblica.com/niv/accuracy/
        • deleted 13y ago
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