this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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My hot take: there’s no such thing as “singular they” because you don’t need a special case for using plural pronouns with a single person; the basic usage already allows that. The plural pronouns refer to a group of people of any size. That includes a group of size 1.
A group of only one person is still a group of people.
That’s why it has always been correct to refer to a single person using the plural pronouns; you’re not directly referring to the person but rather to the group consisting of just that one person.
The reason this confuses people isn’t because the usage is incorrect but rather because what they were taught is incorrect.
People are taught that plural pronouns only refer to more than one person and that has always been wrong.
To see why that’s wrong, consider what happens when the size of the group is neither exactly one or more than one. For example if the group is actually empty or if you don’t know how many people are in it.
In both those cases you need to use the plural pronoun.
If the plural pronouns are a valid choice for both a group of size zero and a group of size two, then it would be ridiculous to argue that they are not a valid choice for a group of size one.
Hot take? That's simply not true.
From the Chicago Manual of Style:
5.51: Generic singular “they” Traditionally, a singular antecedent requires a singular pronoun. But even beforetheir, and themselves (or possibly themself) as generic singular forms—especially in speech and informal prose.
So, "They" is commonly used to refer to a singular person of unknown gender or sex. You'll see it in the news occasionally.
"An intruder wearing a chicken mascot costume was caught on video breaking into a bank. They stuffed their costume full of $100 bills before fleeing the scene."
Sure, writers will more likely not use pronouns at all, maybe saying "the assailant," but when a pronoun is used, "they" and "their" would be perfectly fine.
I think you misunderstood what I’m saying.
I’m not saying you can’t use “they” when referring to a single person; I’m saying that when you do that you haven’t deviated from the simple usage in any way shape or form.
I’m saying there’s no “singular they” because using “they” in that context is just the same as any other usage of “they”. It isn’t any sort of exception to the base rules and so doesn’t require any special treatment.
you did though, it was your first line:
pedantic language nerds on Lemmy? no way!
nm, the rest of the thread is the same.. you are not alone.
It’s obvious what I meant from that is the opposite of how you are construing it. You need to actually read the entire comment.
it's not obvious, sorry. if it were, people would be agreeing with you
They are saying plural means 1 or many while singular means only 1. So 'they' was always plural and plural always included singular.
Sadly dictionary definition says plural does not include 1.