I've recently encountered several people in their teens or early twenties who ask, as individuals, to be referred to as they/them/their/themself. Looking around to see how common this might be, I found an undated (?) survey reporting the following results:
All in all, over eight hundred people responded, the majority from the US and other English-dominant […]
John McIntyre, "I said pound sand, sticklers", 12/27/2012:
Yesterday I sent out this tweet: "Just waved through a singular 'they.' Pound sand, sticklers."
The singular they was in a sentence on The Sun's editorial page: "Although experts say only a tiny proportion of seriously mentally ill people ever resort to acts of violence, the odds of […]
On both sides of the War of the Iptivists, many people seem to believe that opinions about linguistic usage reflect attitudes towards innovation. The story goes like this: A new word, a new form, or a new construction is invented; at first, most people reject the innovation and deprecate the innovators; but the innovation spreads all the […]
Chris Moody, "New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez: Comments like Romney’s set ‘us back as a party’", Yahoo News 11/15/2012:
Martinez criticized Romney's comments when they were reported in September, and on Wednesday reiterated that she found them "ridiculous."
"It's a ridiculous statement to make. You want to earn the vote of every single person you can earn, […]
The path of those who fail to follow the example of scripture is often dark indeed. In particular, in referring to singular quantified entities of indefinite gender, the King James bible and William Shakespeare agree in recommending the pronouns they, them, themselves ("Shakespeare used they with singular antecedents so there", 1/5/2006; "Is 'singular they' verbally and […]
Reader KB sends in two interesting passages from E. Nesbit, The Story of the Amulet, 1906, where it is used when one might have expected singular they (emphasis added):
Chapter 1 (in an Edwardian present) "I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry till their Father had gone; they knew he […]
"Remarks by the President at the National Prayer Breakfast", 1/2/2012:
And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, […]
According to Reid J. Epstein, "Republican debate: 7 attacks on Newt Gingrich to watch", 1210/2011:
“Gov. Romney is much more disciplined in his approach and much more thoughtful about what he says and how he says them,” Iowa state Rep. Renee Schulte said in a Romney campaign press call Friday.
Ms. Schulte may very well have been […]
The misconception that language and culture march in lockstep fashion is so prevalent that pronouncements about grammar can often be used as a sort of Rorschach test to reveal how people really feel about a particular culture. I suspect it's more socially acceptable to vent indirectly about a culture by denouncing its grammar than it […]
In a comment on yesterday's post on "Momentarily", Alan asked
Is there any difference between the language peeves of left-wing authoritarian moralists and right-wing authoritarian moralists? Do they tend to peeve about different kinds of usage?
I don't have a large enough sample to make confident generalizations, but my impression is that peevers across the political spectrum […]
Another example of extreme singular their, this one from Google+:
Today's SMBC imagines the invention of an implantable grammar corrector, the whom-o-matic tooth:
Bob Ladd just got a message requesting an academic reference letter for someone who I will refer to as Gerald Black. I am concealing his name, but not his gender: he is male, and his real name couldn't leave you in any doubt about that. Further concealing the identity of the innocent, let […]
Here is Sandy Brindley, of Rape Crisis Scotland, quoted (in the Metro newspaper, 29 June 2010), talking about an advertisement her organization has published:
The advert has been designed to shake out ingrained prejudices many Scots have towards women who have been raped. Even though people believe they wouldn't judge a rape victim by […]
I've promoted this from its origin as an update to Sunday's post "Spelling is hard". KF wrote:
My dear husband always corrects my grammar…. Spelling is difficult; walls are hard.
Many people fail to use the word hard correctly….
But KF's husband can be added to the list of those who are ignorant about hard. The […]