They … Another Pesky Pronoun
Lately, articles in publications like The Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine have pointed out that more and more people are now accepting they as a grammatically correct singular third-person pronoun.
In other words, it’s now okay to say:
Everyone has their pencil and paper.
Each student was talking to their partner.
First person: I went to my doctor today. Second person: Oh, what did they say? (Because the second person doesn’t know whether the doctor is male or female)
I’m meeting a friend and going to their house. (Because maybe you don’t want to say whether you are going to be with a male or female.)
Using they in these situations saves speakers the problem of using awkward phrases like he or she and his/her.
Sometimes we can avoid this problem by making our sentences plural. For example:
Every student did his or her work can be changed to All the students did their work.
However, this doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you are talking about a single person, but you don’t know their sex or you don’t want your listener to know. Notice that in that last sentence I used their to refer to a single person! Often this is just inevitable in English and it’s nice to know that language experts and editors are finally coming around. You may have a grammar teacher who doesn’t agree, but then you can just refer them to one of the articles I mentioned above (notice that I just used the singular third-person they again!).
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