Robyn Terri  +  319052 Tue, 23 Jan 07 11:40 PM I'm at work and have just received this email, I want to make sure I respond correctly, the form he is talking about will not be changed, we send out thousands of these via email a week, and I'm not sure using the word 'they' is incorrect when refering to one person we do not know the gender of. Also he has made a mistake in his response to us, 'need' instead of needs. Normally I wouldn't even bother responding, but it is the beginning of the day and before I file it away in my 'good for a laugh' file, I'd like to respond absolutly correctly.   "I did not fill in the referee form that you submitted to me because the pronoun changes from he/she to they their etc. in the plural. I am not writing about them but about one applicant, so it need to be written in the singular. The plural case is not clear to me and you need to change this into the singular before I fill in the referee form." Robyn Terri Joined on Sat, Apr 16 2005 Western Australia Full Member 323 Words don't have meanings, meanings have words. Plurals, Nouns, Pronouns, Genders

	Grammar Geek  +  319114 Wed, 24 Jan 07 03:34 AM The jury is still out. You certainly hear "they" used to refer to a person when the gender isn't know, and it's more and more common in informal writing, but there are still peope who oppose its use for the singular in all writing, and many who oppose it in formal writing. Options include he/she (not very elegant), alternating he in one paragraph and she in the next (ugh!), trying to get it all into the plural, or changing it to the second person. (Forms are often in the second person, aren't they?) I wouldn't NOT complete a form because of this (Hey Nona, how does this fit into the "not" disussion?) but the person is at least partly correct Grammar Geek Joined on Tue, Jan 10 2006 Veteran Member 19,652 Barbara, who answers in American English. My housekeeping skills attest to the truth of the second law of thermodynamics: Left to themselves, things get more and more random! Plurals, Paragraphs, Genders

	Marvin A.  +  319116 Wed, 24 Jan 07 03:56 AM Why not, just for laughs, print out the form, cross off all the theys in red ink, replace them with the singular forms, scan it in, and email him the "corrected" form. Marvin A. Joined on Fri, Dec 8 2006 Regular Member 638

	Robyn Terri  +  319130 Wed, 24 Jan 07 04:31 AM I think it is quite rediculous not to fill out a form for this reason, this bloke would be a real pain to work with I imagine. I'd like to respond defending our use of the word 'they' and correcting his use the the word 'need' instead of needs, but of course I want to make sure I do this with very correct English.   Robyn Terri

	Pioussoul  +  319132 Wed, 24 Jan 07 04:35 AM  Robyn Terri wrote: I think it is quite rediculous not to fill out a form for this reason, this bloke would be a real pain to work with I imagine. I'd like to respond defending our use of the word 'they' and correcting his use the the word 'need' instead of needs, but of course I want to make sure I do this with very correct English. Amen to that! Robyn, I'm on your side. Pioussoul Joined on Mon, Jan 22 2007 nowhere and everywhere Full Member 246 I have been captivated by and lost in a fool's paradise for too long to see the truth.

	Marvin A.  +  319135 Wed, 24 Jan 07 04:52 AM Here's something interesting I found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they It is commonly assumed that this usage is due to the singular third-person personal pronouns being either gender-specific (he/she, himself/herself, etc.) or inappropriate for referring to people, such as the forms of it. However, historically, the singular they arose when the number of the referent was indefinite, not the gender. While singular they is often semantically singular, it always takes the same verb forms as plural they; for example, "The person you mentioned, are they coming?"... Although prescriptivists have long attacked this usage as being grammatically incorrect, singular they has a centuries-long history of use, and there are examples in the works of several notable authors, the earliest perhaps being some manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, circa 1400.     Eche of theym sholde […] make theymselfe redy. — William Caxton, The foure sonnes of Aymon, i. 39, ca. 1489 Marvin A. Verbs, Plurals, Nouns, Pronouns, Genders

	Grammar Geek  +  319320 Wed, 24 Jan 07 02:45 PM Robyn, I completely agree you don't want to work with someone who will get wrapped around the axle on something so trivial. I'm not a subjunctive expert, but I believe he was using it when he used "need," and it was not incorrect. Grammar Geek Subjunctives