Good Grief!

The debate continues on whether or not it is acceptable to use they as a singular pronoun. The latest round began when Will Baude of Crescat Sententia disagreed with his professor’s claim that such grammatical hanky panky is never acceptable. His post got quite a response–read his update to see the links.

My knee-jerk reaction is to fall back on good old Strunk and White. From the commonly misused expressions list:

They. A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent anybody, any one, somebody, some one, the intention being either to avoid the awkward “he or she,” or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, “A friend of mine told me that they, etc.”
Use he with all the above words, unless the antecedent is or must be feminine.

I don’t agree that he should always be the default pronoun, but it’s true that pairing plural pronouns with antecedents that require a singular pronoun is simply a crutch (at least in writing). I don’t care who does it—it just ain’t right. Use he, use she, or reword.

That said, I love grammatical debates. There’s a case for breaking the rules, as long as it’s done deliberately and thoughtfully. I don’t agree with the original post, but it made for some great reading over the weekend, when things are usually slow around the blogosphere (I hate that word).