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Singular they rule (pawb.social)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

174 comments fedilink hide all child comments

ALT TEXT:

Panel 1: A person with the text "Singular 'they'" written on them smiling with open arms.
Panel 2: "Singular 'They'" beaten up by others who said, "Singular they is ungrammatical. It's too confusing," "How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular," and "Every pronoun should only have one purpose."
Panel 3: "You" hiding from the mob who was beating "Singular 'They'"
Panel 4: "German 'Sie'" hiding with even more fear next to "You"

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Singular they sometimes works and sometimes it sounds odd. It usually sounds off when used by itself without following something explicitly singular.

"The customer forgot their wallet. Can you bring it to them?" sounds correct but if you just do

"They forgot to pay their bill" it sounds like you're referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.

Edit: Changed to a better example.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

“They left their wallet on the table” it sounds like you’re referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.

Does it? If multiple people left multiple wallets on the table, it would be, "They left their wallets on the table." Multiple people can't really leave a single wallet behind. Or at least that would be very unusual and unintuitive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

True. I'll change it to a (hopefully) better example.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

“A customer forgot to pay their bill” sounds totally normal to me though, you just need a reference before throwing a pronoun out there, if the context doesn’t clear up the number of people referred to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I agree.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"They forgot to pay their bill" it sounds like you're referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.

This sounds normal to me, how else would you word it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

If it was a singular customer, I would say "He forgot to pay his bill" (or she/her depending on the gender).