Friday, January 15, 2016

Speaking to Win & Singular "They"

I'm attending Steven Stark's "Speaking to Win" CLE at the State Bar of Georgia today. I'm excited about this CLE and will report details later!

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves about the singular "they," which is becoming the norm. I have made no secret that I oppose this--at least in writing. I use the singular "they" in speaking all the time, but using it in writing seems too informal for me. My position is becoming the minority one, but I'm sticking to it, at least for now.

This NPR article on the topic is a good one, as is the American Dialect Society's article on its choice of the singular "they" as the 2015 Word of the Year.    

Happy Friday!

1 comment:

  1. Comment from James Eschen:

    I use the singular they to mean he or she only as a last resort when I cannot rewrite the sentence to use the plural they or to eliminate the pronoun altogether. "He or she" and "s/he" are out of the question.

    What bugs me is using they as a singular neuter pronoun. On NPR this morning, David Greene said, "Here are a few different ways to look at Russia. You can see some of the grandiose moves they’ve made on the world stage ... ." The British might say that Russia have made grandiose moves, but here Russia, like every country, is a singular "it."

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