AP stylebook now allows the "singular they" in some instances

boing
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Those examples work the same way as when using pronouns for several people with the same gendered pronouns. For example:

Traditional grammar: He hated the food, but he liked it.
Probable fix: Maximiliano hated the food, but Abooksigun liked it.

The trick seems to be, as usual, being mindful of when one has established what pronoun is being used for whom, and when it risks being mistaken for anyone else. I have an in-law who is terrible at this even with gendered pronouns, and even after years they are still surprised if you don’t know who is being referred to. “I spoke with your mom today, and he said that he’ll call back later.”

But also, “traditional” really is a loaded term. Because it tends to be used to lend a practice broad legitimacy when no traditions are universal. It might not be prudent to assume that your traditions are those of others with whom you speak. They might be, but it never hurts to ask.

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I wish I could recommend something like Duolingo, but it doesn’t have Arabic and I don’t know other good resources for beginners because I’m not one. It does work great for Hebrew, though. Although for me Hebrew is fairly intuitive because it’s in the same language family and I imagine it goes the other way. Japanese is my language “stretch goal” so-to-speak, but I’ve been turned off to it somewhat because of the phenomenal expense of going to Japan.

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Mod note: The snark is thick in here. Stay on topic. Argue in PM if you’re so inclined.

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William Empson - Seven Types of Ambiguity.

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I don’t see the need to bring the universe into the discussion. It’s not even really necessary to talk about other languages from this planet.

English, as part of its globalization, is also diversifying (and might even become several languages in time), but the tradition of our grammar is relatively narrow. One small country is right there in the name. That can give us a reasonably solid basis for asserting a traditional grammar, without appeal to the contemporary diversity of global English.

Your example veers from this tradition. The purpose of a pronoun in a sentence like this is to replace the proper noun for brevity’s sake, while maintaining clarity. One would do so thusly:

Maximiliano went out for dinner with his friend Abooksigun. He hated the food, but Abooksigun liked it.

This is the only possible substitution that maintains clarity.

If a distinction could be made between the two individuals with just pronouns, both names could be replaced in the second sentence while maintaining clarity.

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Thank you for this phrase. “Weaponized grammar!”

I adore linguistics and grammar with a passion, but most self-styled “grammar mavens” or “grammar sticklers” give me a giant pain in the tuchus.

I mean, most of the time, they’re not even talking about grammar — they’re talking about arbitrary stylebook rules or class-baiting shibboleths or bizarre superstitions invented out of whole cloth by under-educated 18th-C. usage writers (I’m looking at you, Robert Baker!) or by confused academics who imagined that Latin grammar was somehow universal.

But when they do actually address grammatical issues, they generally end up insisting that people should not speak the way that they do, but rather, the way that a particular set of rules prescribe.

It’s like insisting that people should follow the path of a road shown on a map, even though the road has been obliterated by new construction.

Grammar rules are just a map of how people use the territory of language.

Usage changes from time to time*, and the map is not the territory. Even in the absence of gross change, the territory often has details — paths and byways, through gates and over hedges and stiles — that escape the mapmaker’s notice.

Skilled writers were using singular ‘they’ in professionally edited and published English for hundreds of years before the 18th-C grammarians got around to forbidding it by boxing themselves into logical corners.

Nice to see the AP has noticed this particular old byway.

* As my old friend, writer/editor Damon Knight used to say, “Linguistic change is a contact sport.” (-: So, “hey, language changes” doesn’t mean I can’t inveigh against dimwitted new changes that I dislike. Whonose, maybe I can help a strangle another dumb idea in its crib. (-:

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So, i used to live in Quebec, where we were reminded of the ‘correct’ way of using both English and French by local speakers. One of the things that occurred to me was that English unlike French is not actually controlled by a central government sponsored agency. There is no such thing as “correct” English, either in pronunciation, grammar or punctuation. The correct thing to do is communicate in a way that shares your meaning(s) with your audience in the way you intend. Often in normal use this means breaking the rules and making it up as we go along.

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I agree. My point was that this can also be true of using “they”. The only exception I can think of is when people have a pronoun that they suppose is only likely to apply to one person but not the other. So perhaps that’s what you assume, but I do not. I always assume a neutral gender unless anyone specifies otherwise.

Dialects, regions, subcultures, and other factors also comprise traditions of use of language which intersect with the traditions of the central language as a whole. When I commented upon tradition I did not mean necessarily between English and other distinct languages.

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This is the Internet:

…wins the choice.
:wink:

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I’m assuming that frantic arguments about gender will draw most of the attention; but isn’t one of the major use cases of the “singular they” situations where the gender of the person being referred to is simply unknown in context?

Very common when talking about a job description when you don’t know who is currently filling it, or about a generalization: “if you set a human on fire, they often run around waving their arms and making curious mouth noises”, that sort of thing.

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if you set a human on fire, they often run around waving their arms and making curious mouth noises

Of course one can use “they” in that context. But one can equally well use the non-gendered “he.” To use “he” in that way is a time-honored way of referring to the gender of a person when that gender is uncertain or unknown - or non-existent, as when the antecedent of “he” is “no one.”

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I don’t believe you have made the case that the distinction can be made using “they.” Is that what people refer to as a “distinction without a difference?”

Abolishing the pronouns “he” and “she” and using “they” in their place would impair both clarity and brevity.

I don’t expect we will settle on a nonbinary replacement in my lifetime, but if we do it won’t be “they.”

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And yet, coming from Northern England, I’ve heard it enough that if I was in the right parts of Yorkshire or Tyneside, say, (amongst others), I’d parse it correctly. Depending on which pub I was in, and how many pints I’d had, I might even code switch, myself. :wink:

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During those rare moments when I am not posting at BB, I am editor of an academic journal. We have a 23 page house style guide which is full of things I do not like, but that is our style so I enforce it. The nominal reason is that a journal (or - in the case of the AP guide - a newspaper) is more than simply a like-themed collection of articles stapled together, and having contrasting styles can interfere with the transparency of the content.

While having disparate styles between articles is a more subtle issue than, say, having disparate fonts, it is at heart the same issue.

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Always sound words to live by, and always worth reiterating.

…and likewise, while I’m greatly Descriptive, rather than Prescriptive in such matters, this is one of two key points in such discussions that often gets missed. (The other, as @the_borderer states, is that gender-neutral ‘he’ is a retrofit, or workaround at best.)

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Oh, in-house style guides are great. Absolutely fascinating glimpses into a publication’s standards and values - especially where they’re publicly available, and while I only have (looks to the left, squints) The Economist’s and Wired’s (v1) to hand, The (UK) Guardian’s is my favourite for pragmatism, simplicity and clarity. (Available in print, but handily on-line at
Guardian and Observer style guide: A | About | The Guardian )

(I do also love https://twitter.com/guardianstyle - glorious snark, and unblushing clarifications on request. (Correct UK past tense of ‘shit’ requested? Unblinkingly given, with example usage, for instance) )

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I did look to DuoLingo (which is great for picking up a language to an extent) and, yeah, it’s not there. It’s a damn shame, too.

My ‘stetch goal’ has always been Chinese but the thought of facing hanzi fills me with existential dread. I’m sure that the poems of Li Qingzhao are searingly beautiful in the original but I’m not sure I physically can fit all those shapes into my head without going permanently batty.

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I entirely agree with you. However, I would like to know who you think proposing this? Nobody, as far as I can tell. The argument is mostly about whether or not “he” can any longer be used on its own in a gender-neutral context, not about abolishing words entirely. Some of us feel that it is no longer appropriate and are suggesting that there is no difficulty with using singular they as a replacement when the gender of the subject is unknown (or, as in the original posting case, is being applied to someone who does not find binary gender terms appropriate), and that in most cases readers simply don’t notice anyway when we do. That’s not to say that it’s an easy thing to do; there are plenty of edge cases that require sentences to be rewritten, and, given that most of us learnt to use “he” when we were five, it’s not yet automatic. But it may be. One day.

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There absolutely were!


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