It's They!

Via Alas, A Blog, I find this Motivated Grammar piece in defense of the singular 'they.' Foremost among the many reasons we should chill out about it: it's been in use just about since people have been writing in English. Some fine examples from various time periods are presented.

Yes, it seems we've always known that "he or she" can be awkward and that the generic masculine seems weird when used to include female persons. That's all very well when you're not actually that interested in talking about female persons, but sometimes it's just unavoidable to include them in a sentence.

I myself have been pursuing a poorly organized campaign (consisting of occasional mentions on this blog) in favor of calling everyone "it," which if memory serves you will find in E. Nesbit's Five Children and It.

This is partly because I like objective, neutral language, and partly because I like robots (Vote Machine!) and partly because I like poorly organized campaigns. In the absence of any signs of success in this mission, however, I will happily promote the singular 'they' as an alternative, confident that it has sound grammatical foundations.

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