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Pam Nelson: The Grammar Guide

 

‘pronouns and antecedents’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

Feb. 8: More about the singular “they” (2)

I participated in an ACES Twitter chat, Your Grammar Question Answered, Tuesday during which we chatted about the singular “they.” One of my co-chatters, @KUBremner, aka Lisa McLendon, noted that the singular “they” can be handy as an epicene — a word that has only one form for both masculine and feminine. So we could use the epicene “they/them/their” in a sentence such as this: Everyone picked up their pencils and began the test. “Their” refers to the indefinite pronoun “everyone.” Because we don’t know everyone’s sex, we use “their,” which sounds less formal than “his or her” and doesn’t[.....]

June 10, 2012: Pronouns: “They” is too much with us (2)

I am almost ready to come around on the view that “they,” “them” and “their” are acceptable after a singular pronoun antecedent (When the bell rings, everyone picks up their books to go home.) Almost. I don’t freak out when I read such constructions. (In truth, I probably never freaked out. I am a fairly even-keeled person — except when I see scary whales or  hear Chris Matthews yammering.) I still change such constructions in editing. Where I work, the publication style guide explicitly calls for doing so.  We use “he or she” when such a construction is called[.....]