“THEY”—AN APOLOGY.

“THEY”—AN APOLOGY. Kids, I had arguments with each of you when you were in middle school and high school about whether you could properly use “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun (that is, saying, “If a student drops their book.”) I think I was a little uneasy at the time, but I didn’t let on. I was sure that this was the kind of usage that English teachers and copy editors had their knives out for (or “for which they had their knives out.”) I also didn’t tell you that I would have preferred that “they” was acceptable because it would have been useful. McWhorter thinks the rule forbidding “they” is as foolish as the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. But he also points out that the usage of “they” as a singular gender-neutral pronoun goes back to the 1400’s. Shakespeare uses it in the The Comedy of Errors. Thackeray uses it in Vanity Fair. If I had known about these long-standing precedents, I still would have advised you not to challenge English teachers. For myself, since I am not going to be facing any more English teachers, I intend to use “they” more often.