Community Chat

[Noel7]

I absolutely *love* the site Daily Writting Tips. Anyone can sign up to recieve their daily (fascinating and helpful) tips in email.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

One of today's features is on the use of "they" as a singular pronoun. I admit I do it... with crushing guilt. But! As it turns out, it is more than acceptable under most circumstances, and "the singular they is widely accepted in written British English, and it is well documented in the works of many great writers, including Auden, Austen, Byron, Chaucer, Dickens, Eliot, Shakespeare, Shaw, Thackeray, and Trollope. It was the singular pronoun of choice in English for hundreds of years before, in 1745, an otherwise-reasonable grammarian named Anne Fisher — yes, a woman — became possibly the first person to champion he as the universal pronoun of choice."

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-%E2%80%9Cthey%E2%80%9D-acceptable-as-a-singular-pronoun/