You May Be Using The Singular ‘They’ Incorrectly
Posted on Oct. 4, 2016 / Subscribe 0
By Joseph Priest, Corporate Writer, Syniverse
Which is the best way to write the following sentence? (Hint: It’s the one that sounds the most natural.):
- “Everyone has his own opinion.”
- “Everyone has her own opinion.”
- “Everyone has his or her own opinion.”
- “People have their own opinions.”
- “Everyone has their own opinion.”
If you selected door number five, congratulations, you’re a winner. The accepted use of “they” as a singular pronoun to refer to a subject like “anyone” or “everyone” in formal writing is finally reaching a tipping point among language authorities, and it’s a pronoun that public relations pros should feel more comfortable in using as correct and accepted English usage. It’s been adopted as the official style of several leading news outlets now and its perception as a casualism not fit for serious writing is crumbling fast.
So feel free to start using the forms of “they” below, and ditch the “his,” “her,” “his or her,” and changing-the-subject-to-a-plural-solution in these kinds of sentences:
- “Each citizen is required to pay their income tax.”
- “Everyone has their own reason for choosing what candidate to vote for.”
- “Any public relations professional can set themselves up with their own firm.
If you want a little more detail on this language change, please read on. If not, please stop here, and have at it in using the singular “they” when needed in your writing. And if anyone has a question on this, they should email me at [email protected].
The singular “they” has been a common habit in American speech for centuries, but stylebooks and usage guides have continued to rail against it. For example, the sentence “Nobody remembers a doctor for their handwriting” would be completely natural in conversation. Once it gets transferred to the written word, though, many well-meaning language sticklers are tempted to make it “Nobody remembers a doctor for his handwriting”; or, worse, “Nobody remembers a doctor for his or her handwriting”; and, possibly even worse than that, “Nobody remembers doctors for their handwriting.”
To get an idea of why the uses above have presented problems, let’s take a look at the history of the pronouns used in the examples in the first paragraph of this post:
- “Everyone has his own opinion.” This option, with “his,” was the traditional singular pronoun option and was considered acceptable until a few decades ago, when a movement began to eradicate masculine terms from English and make the language more gender-neutral.
- "Everyone has her own opinion." This option, with “her,” arose when “his” began falling out of favor, but the use of “her” can come off as a kind of linguistic affirmative action and seem patronizing.
- "Everyone has his or her own opinion." This option, with “his or her,” has been a less common way to solve the need for a singular pronouns, and the problem with it is that it sounds awfully stilted and unnatural.
- "People have their own opinion." And this option, with the plural “they,” represents perhaps the most common way of getting around the singular pronoun conundrum -- by just making the subject plural – and it’s inferior because changing the subject from singular to plural often affects the tone and meaning of a sentence.
Now, though, the singular “they” has finally come into its own as a practical choice that is much better than the options above. Long controversial but with no other practical alternative, the singular “they” is what Washington Post copy editor and author Bill Walsh has described as “the only sensible solution to English’s lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.”
In fact, many of the criticisms of the singular “they” are without merit, as Anne Curzan, professor of English and associate dean for humanities at the University of Michigan, has explained. For starters, she notes, as far as its history, the singular “they” has been in regular use in spoken English and informal prose for centuries. To say it’s ambiguous is nonsensical, too, because she says ambiguity is often the point of its use, and all pronouns have some potential ambiguity. Finally, to say “they” is too informal for formal writing is a circular argument she argues, because many editors have devoted much of their time to taking it out of formal, published writing.
The only real question concerning singular they, she concludes, is “whether we should and will let ‘they’ be used in its singular form in formal, edited prose without comment. That decision is within our control.”
This decision is being made now. The singular “they” was named Word of the Year for 2015 by over 200 language experts at the American Dialect Society’s annual meeting in January, was sanctified in the Washington Post style guide late last year, been used by such publications as the Baltimore Sun, led by one of the dean of American copy editors, John McIntyre, for years, and even mildly sanctioned by major dictionaries like The American Heritage Dictionary. What’s more, the singular “they” has long been common and accepted in British English.
Unfortunately, though, our go-to resource for public relations style and usage guidelines, the AP Stylebook, has still not embraced this thinking, but with the consensus about “they” building in other language quarters, I predict the AP Stylebook to bless this change soon.
Nevertheless, I urge you to begin “theying” away when you come across a need for it in your writing. It has official precedent now and has to be better than continuing to use a sexist “his,” a patronizing “her,” a stilted “his or her,” or a let’s-bypass-this-problem-by-making-the-subject-plural cop-out.
What do you think? If anyone has a thought on this, I hope they let me know.
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