The Ripple Effect of "They" as Third Person Singular

But I think Nabisco has somewhat of a point, in that I think years ago, it would've been much more likely, in that first example, for "she" to be used -- nowadays, because of gender-neutrality concerns, people are so unaccustomed to using "he" or "she" in "anonymous" ways like this, even when it's appropriate! They've almost acquired the stiffness of substituting "one," as in "one should see..."

That doesn't look like a third person singular to me.

You want to say: "Anyone who experiences pain should see his or her doctor."
You could say: "Patients who experience pain should see their doctors."
But you say: "Anyone who experiences pain should see their doctor."

I dunno, I guess it never occurred to me (somehow) that this would hop out way beyond the question of gender-neutrality and basically jack our notions of plural/singular agreement way the fuck up. Sentences starting with "anyone" or "everyone" are a grammatical free-for-all at this point.

Not to put too fine a point on it, poorly constructed grammar and inattention to detail did not begin with the use of they as a third person singular. It has a long and noble history.

OTOH, if you spoke with the author of your example, pointed out their error and were told it was no error, but rather reflected the author's exact intent, then we can safely proceed to discuss it on those grounds. Otherwise, it is safer to think it was a simple lapse of attention, instead of a lapse in judgement.

In certain contexts "their carts" would more clearly appear incorrect. For instance if this were written in the past tense:

"The SuperPriceMart shoppers brought their carts to the express lane for check-out."

This would clearly look wrong if "cart" were substituted for "carts".

However, the fact that the example you originally gave is in the context of an announcement made to the shoppers, gives it an implied second-person context, even though it's stated in the third person. The equivalent that people hear in their minds is something closer to: "You can now bring your cart to the express lane for check-out."

OK. Then I guess you need to prove to me that the problem you are defining is actually a problem that exists. I haven't been seeing these confusions you speak of. And synthetic examples you made up aren't precisely convincing in this regard.

no one would dream of saying "their cart"

As far as I can see, the only person who has yet dreamt of saying "their cart" is you, so your contention that 'no one would dream of saying' it might be truer than you intended.

One reason I am not quoting actual examples = it would probably violate some sort of clause in my contract.

It's also interesting that in several of the examples (they are pointed out in the list), singular "their" refers to each of several women, and so was not used to express gender-neutrality. The reason for this is that singular "their" can serve as a general way of expressing indefiniteness, which need not have anything whatever to do with gender-neutrality. So for example, Shakespeare wrote "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend" (Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3), and in Mrs. Gaskell's 1855 novel North and South, a male character says "I was never aware of any young lady trying to catch me [i.e. matrimonially], nor do I believe that anyone has ever given themselves that useless trouble".

In these examples (from writers of established pedigree) "their" is used as a third-person singular even when the gender of the subject being referred to is known.

However, I didn't see any examples in that article like the second article that Nabisco gave, in which the use of "their" as a third-person singular seems to act as a gateway that allows a plural subject to morph into a singular subject mid-sentence.

The main way that 3PS "they" could be considered logical and systematic in English would be if we were to treat constructions like "everybody" and "not a man" as indefinite in number and assigned "they" to all such constructions -- the same way conditional verbs get conjugated differently.

But what I was getting at here is that the "they" isn't really getting properly systematized, I don't think, not yet, and it's kind of floating around bumping a lot of other stuff off in the meantime.

(Each and) every mother should love her son.

Still, doesn't bother me as much as, "Where'd you go to school at?"

FWIW, I tend to be fairly permissive in both spoken grammar and informal writing: if an ordinary person can accurately grasp the intended communication, then it is a quibble to demand any more than that.

For writing that is more formal in nature or intended to meet some sort of professional standards, then I would consider both your examples simply as errors to be corrected. Not because they are unintelligible or easily misunderstood, for they are neither, but because they exhibit the sort of sloppiness and inexactitude that is easy to remedy and therefore inexcusable in a professional setting.

Diagnosing the source of these errors in the common use of "they" as a third person singular may be correct, but seems to me immaterial. Such use of "they" is legitimate in a colloquial setting, but a great many colloquialisms are inadmissable in a professional context, not just this one. There is no purpose in complaining that its existance in common speech leads to this kind of error. It is just as legitimate to blame the existance of professional standards, for 'criminalizing' unimportant misdemeanors such as these that do no harm.

x-post dude jay the former surely?

So far as what ordinary people can understand, well, duh, except that the reason I'm interested in this stuff is that if syntax doesn't maintain some level of logic, there comes a point where ordinary people have lots of room to misunderstand, or at least have to waste extra time playing detective. I don't think this really happens with 3PS "they," which is already approaching being totally logical and systematic. The part that I find weird is stuff like the shopping-cart one, where the 3PS "they" is more or less instrumental in someone's making a whole other related mistake. And while I don't have time to sort through every possible context to come up with the one complex scenario where that could cause critical misunderstandings (you know, maybe something with nuclear launch technicians and their singular/multiple keys), it's certainly possible.

"The owners brought their Beetle to the dealership."

No one would ever write that. Outside of an imperative, second-person context, it breaks down.

Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after their purchase.

I.e., the sentence is plural right up to they/their, and then suddenly the writer begins thinking of "they" as singular.

- Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after they have made a purchase.
- Your rebate will be awarded 6 to 8 weeks after your purchase.

GRRR NO hazel, you're totally not following this at all. I'm not getting mixed up, the author is. Each customer has made one purchase. The writer uses "their" in the traditional plural. But we're all so used to using "their" as an abstract singular that this writer just writes "purchase." The word "their" is now acting as a bridge that allows the writer to mentally slide from plural to singular without thinking.

Either three kids get together to play with THEIR ball (collectively owned), or each of them goes home to play with THEIR ball (individual balls, "their" used as singular). What other option are you postulating here?

Foucault worthy, my friend.

Hazel this is retarded. And your lost post is bizarre, given that I have the "context" sitting on my desk right now and you don't. It refers to many individual purchases by individual customers. Customers (plural) get rebates (plural) for making purchases (plural). See? So there are only two contexts I can think of in which someone says "their [singular item]." One is when a bunch of people possess something collectively; that's not the case here. The other is when "they" is being used in its singular capacity.

I appreciate your faith that I've come up with an interpretation of agreement so innovative and special that "no other native speaker" ever would dream it, but I'm sorry to tell you that the last time I corrected something like this, the bizarre STET response I got was "no, style says it's okay to use 'they' as singular."

"Purchase" is probably singular because while the subject being addressed is plural (customers) the instructions refer to a single purchase. Just like I might say something like "I told the children to put their ball away in their locker after they finished playing with it." If I said that to you in front of a bunch of children all holding balls, you wouldn't assume that there was only one ball and one locker even though syntactically you could interpret what I said that way.

xpost

(Also, I'm 50 kinds of ready to go home, so maybe I'll catch up with this thread later.)

Also funny how it depends what words you're using: without thinking about it, I would probably say "17 varieties of [singular]" but "17 kinds of [plural]." Like the ritzier the first word, the more likely to match it with the "proper"-sounding singular?

Hazel I'm sorry but this is the wrongest thing I've ever heard, and seems to miss some serious basics of subject/object agreement. If you gave 12 children a candy bar each, you would say "Okay, children, eat your candy bars." Plural, bars. If 88 chickens laid an egg each, you would say "look at those chickens lay those eggs!" Eggs, plural. This is very simple. And if 4500 customers bought 4500 computers, you would say "THE CUSTOMERS HAVE MADE THEIR PURCHASES."

Because if there are plural customers and a singular purchase, that means THEY ALL CHIPPED IN. And yes, if you said "I told the children to put their ball away," most people would assume they were all SHARING ONE BALL. This is like super-retarded basic.

The kids won't clean their room = multiple kids share a room.
The kids won't clean their rooms = there are multiple rooms.

Your last suggestion -- just dropping the "their" entirely -- works, partly because purchase ceases to be a singular/plural noun and becomes an abstract noun referring to an ACT, and partly because it slips over into a realm of legal-copy dialect that admits of that usage.

http://www.bongonews.com/StoryImages/mdf526240Reuters23.jpg

However, most human situations tolerate a goodly amount of inexactitude and ambiguity before they start to break down - especially conversations, where it is possible to clarify and reiterate when the first attempt fails. So, those who are countering nasbisco's points are not wrong either. Most of the examples that have been given have a tolerable amount of inexactitude, because the context can bear that amount quite easily without any tears being shed.

Uh, no, you could say "eat your candy bar" here.

Not so many centuries ago, English had a perfectly good second person singular. It was 'thou'. 'You' was used only for plural address. It worked out slick. Then, as in German, 'you' became the polite form of address and 'thou' was considered rather intimate and informal. From there it all went downhill.

Heaven forfend that anyone should speak impolitely to anyone else!

So, 'you' totally supplanted 'thou'. The Quakers made their small revolt over this issue, by keeping 'thou' alive within their sect, but when they used 'thou' in everyday discourse, they were considered horrid "levelers" and revolutionaries and probably treasonous to boot. Eventually 'thou' died a peaceful death in Percy Shelley's poetry (and his many admirers and imitators) and has not arise again from its grave since 1900 or so. 'You' has served double duty as both singular and plural ever since.

The other lack is a gender inspecific third person singular. This isn't precisely true. 'It' is perfectly serviceable for objects where one does not wish to specify gender. But, 'it' is (once again) considered foully bad form when referring to humans rather than teapots, stones or lumps of shit.

'One' has done good work for many a century in this neutered, but persnable role. Alas, 'one' is now considered to be outmoded, old-fashioned and stuffy.

In view of this horrendous situation, I nominate 'peep' to stand in for this much-needed informal, non-stuffy third person singular. I eagerly await ILX's approbation for this inspired stroke of genius!

What say you, peeps?

(Although I do suspect that if you said "okay, children" you would go on in that plural mode and probably say "eat your candy bars.")

Also Aimless I do just want to reiterate one last time that I'm not saying any of these constructions are horrifically unclear in everyday conversation or even in writing -- I'm just curious about how the relate to that Total Exactitude thing because, well, I'm curious. (That and I do some proofreading, which, while it doesn't call for total exactitude in my particular circumstances, certainly gets you thinking about tolerable levels of inexactitude.)

Allow the customer to see what they want to see.

I'd never really thought about it, but duh: even when we use "they" in the singular, we use the plural verb conjugation. ("They wants" would sound terrible to most people.) So we have some kind of aesthetic irregularity going on: with the possessive ("their cart" and "their purchase") we're assigning "they" a singular match, but with the verb, always the nice-sounding plural.

(That sentence above also makes me see Nate's point. Personally I'd be tempted to just stick an S on "customer" and make the whole thing one nicely agreed unawkward plural, but I can see how one might want to maintain the singular mood and inflection, especially in something like instructions.)

- Each customer will receive their rebate 6-8 weeks after they have made their purchase.
- Customers will receive their rebates 6-8 after they make their purchases.
- You will receive your rebate 6-8 weeks after you make your purchase.
- Rebates will be awarded 6-8 weeks after customers have made their purchases.
- Each rebate will be awarded 6-8 weeks after the customer makes their purchase.

I still don't see a problem with this sentence. Rewrite it as

"Customers will receive their rebate 6-8 weeks after they have made a purchase." and it retains the singular "they", the singular "a" and still makes complete sense.

The kids won't clean their room.
The kids won't clean their rooms.

These mean different things, having to do with whether the kids all share one room, or whether they are split up into multiple rooms.

I think maybe part of what throws off the sentence is a question of audience. Like if I worked at this corporation and I were explaining the rebate offer to my boss, I would probably use the plural -- "our customers will get rebates for making eligible purchases." If I were trying to explain to the customer, I would use second person -- "you'll get your rebate after you make an eligible purchase." But the legal-copy norm here is to try and split the difference artificially, maybe? To spell out the terms as if addressing some abstract judging entity rather than the consumer -- they rarely say "you" unless you're supposed to be signing them (and then half the time they switch over into that weird contract realm where the reader is actually "I" and the author is "you"). So maybe offer details and such should just use the appropriate second person, instead of trying to bend the third person into it.

Consider...

"Customers will receive their rebate 6-8 weeks after they have made each purchase"

But yes: making the subject "each customer" would fix the problem handily.

I think that's a good description of what's happening. The sentence is ostensibly written in the plural third person (describing a policy that will apply collectively to an abstract group of people), but it is intended to be read and understood in a second person singular context (ie., by each individual person that it applies to).

(which throws a Bob Dole third-person-as-first-person into the mix to boot!)

"Everyone in town drives a Ford."

and

"All the people in town drive Fords."

Both sentences are grammatically correct and both mean exactly the same thing, but one is stated in singular and one in plural. This shows that when referring to an abstract class of people, the notion of number is somewhat fluid.

I think what gets me about these is that they seem fairly natural, fairly right, and yet they're actually kinda deeply weird!

- Each customer will receive their rebate 6-8 weeks after they have made their purchase.

Um

SuperPriceMart shoppers can now bring their cart to the west entrance for express check-out.

I hate to say this, but this seems idiomatically right to me - though I have no idea why, and I can see its illogic. But I had to read through three times before I even saw the numerical disagreement. My beard is whiter than yours, and "Everyone bring their cart" still jars me, so I don't think the "SuperPriceMart shoppers... their cart" problem is due to increasing prevalence of the singular "they." But I do see why you find it a problem.

Chuck - Actually, I didn't notice that I'd used "authoritative" twice. So let's change the second one ("He's as authoritative and beautiful a singer as anyone in the genre") to "commanding."

Also, a paragraph earlier, I have "all the camping it up and rib-jabbing unleashes genuine joy in Bare's singing." Should this be "unleash" rather than "unleashes"? I'm not 100% sure. ("All the hemming and hawing was annoying"? "Were annoying"? "All the pork and rice were eaten"? "Was eaten"? For some reason, "was" and not "were" feels correct in those two instances. "Hemming and hawing" is kind of a collective singular, but not "pork and rice." So why does the latter feel as if it takes a singular verb?)

And the other half of the problem is that it's hard to remember the singular/plural distinction between stuff like "everyone" and "shoppers," because in those two examples they mean the exact same thing -- everyone who's shopping. Even ignoring the "they" issue, plenty of people would very naturally say Everyone bring your carts to the front -- it's just a matter of substituting the singular "everyone" for the plural "all of you," both of which mean basically the same thing in this context.

The part I find weird about all of this is that lots of combinations of this stuff, including plenty of "wrong" ones, all seem natural or understandable or fine to us. Which I guess just means we're in some kind of state of syntactical flux on some of this stuff, which presumably won't settle until right around the time we're all dead.

:(

More alternate versions of the example:

A rebate will be awarded to customers six to eight weeks after their purchase.
A rebate will be awarded to customers six to eight weeks after their purchases.

And the others to get them all together:

Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after their purchase.
Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after their purchases.
Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after purchase.
Rebates will be awarded to customers 6 to 8 weeks after purchases.

I don't think the correctness of a particular version of this sentence can be determined with reference to just English syntax. Native speakers will have a preference for some of them which is governed by some sense of agreement in number between nouns in the sentence, which particular nouns being determined by context not syntax. And by context I don't just mean surrounding sentences but also what people know about how the world works.

I still don't believe "they" as a third person singular pronoun has much to do with which versions of the rebate sentence people feel is correct, mostly because removing it from the sentence doesn't clear up the ambiguity but also because English speakers are used to pronouns not being proximate to the referents with which they have to agree.

I'm totally repeating myself and will stop from here on out.

Plus I don't get why you're still asking about the agreement. Look upthread at the kids and their room(s). The presence or non-presence of the (s) affects what the sentence means. Pretty substantially. And whatever, yes, maybe we can figure most of these out from common-knowledge "context," but frankly (a) I'm not interested in that here, plus (b) that can be a lazy cop-out, and once you have like two or three different things in a sentence that you're expecting people to figure out from context it actually becomes really hairy, plus (c) one of the nice things about good grammar and syntax is that they can allow us to understand what people are saying even when they're not saying stuff we already know! I mean, "context" is all very good for shopping-cart announcements, but at some point you're trying to figure out the benefit structure of your life-insurance plan and you're way over your head and you actually need this kind of clarity -- because maybe that (s) determines whether your kids each get a payment of $100,000, or whether they all get $100,000 to share.

Try this with something people can't share, and you really see how it works. If not for "they" as singular, there would be no reason to ever, ever say THEIR VAGINA. But now that we use "their" as singular, we might say SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR VAGINA. And once we say that, it's easy to slip over into WOMEN NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR VAGINA, which is insane, because duh, women don't all share one vagina.

Lay out for me the basics of this "subject/object agreement" you brought up to explain why your reading is the only correct one. Something like "the object of a preposition has to agree in number with the subject noun under the following conditions..."

I think the term "agreement" might be throwing you off, because what's at stake here is less about syntax and more about agreement with reality. The "rule" is that if you're talking about one thing, you use a singular word, and if you're talking about many things, you use a plural. To wit:

- I have five children, and they all live in one room. I say: This is the kids' room. I use "room," singular, because there is only one room.

- I have five children, and they are split up into three different rooms. I say: These are the kids' rooms. I use "rooms," plural, because there are three of them.

The plural makes a very basic, obvious difference, above and beyond the question of grammatical agreement. Either there's one of something or there are many.

Then grammatical agreement enters into it, because the subject I'm actually talk about may be singular or plural.

- If my five children each had individual rooms, I could say this: Children, clean your rooms. There are multiple children cleaning multiple rooms.

- But in the same situation, I could also say to my children: Everyone, clean your room. There are multiple rooms, yes. But I say "room" because my sentence started with "everyone," which is singular. I am saying: every single one of you, clean your (individual, respective) room. It's grammatically similar to saying Bobby, clean your room -- Bobby only has one room.

- If my five kids had separate, individual rooms, I could not say: Everyone, clean your rooms. Not every "one" has multiple rooms. This would be as wrong as saying Bobby, clean your rooms. Bobby would turn around and point out that he only has one room -- what else is he supposed to clean?

- And if my five kids had separate, individual rooms, I could not say: Children, clean your room. I would be asking multiple children to clean a single room. And they do not have a room to clean -- they each, individually, have rooms.

I think your confusion might be with words like "everyone" and "anyone." These words are singular -- hence the "one." They do not work, grammatically, the same as "customers" -- they work, grammatically, the same as "that one customer there."

I also disagree with your conjectures about the destabilizing effects of using they/their/them as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. I could be convinced, but you haven't really provided any kind of supporting evidence for those claims.

Humans can understand imperfect syntax. Unlike computers. Ja?

See hazel keeps asking me to provide "evidence" that the latter happens due to the common use of a singular "they" -- the fact that people keep getting confused about the issue seems like evidence of precisely that!

Few musicians consciously hark back to his or her old music...

Inevitable word ahoy: themself

Makes sense.

Oh that's already in wide usage.

Cannot tell the correctness of the 2 examples in OP out of context. Maybe they were pregnant women or conjoined twins.

How about that, Judge Derrida?

I did such a crap job of explaining in this thread's original run. I like the life-insurance example, though. Half of why I get grumpy when people say "it makes sense in context" has to do with reading precise, complex things like legal copy, where a bad comma or agreement could make a huge difference.

The good news is that I've now made this correction enough times at work that it seems like certain people have figured out what I mean, and will make the change. (Well, either that or they're tired of thinking about it, and figure I wouldn't keep making it if I didn't have a reason.)

guess what, i think of you every time i see this!

All lawyers should be forced to diagram their own sentences for a year.

The problem here isn't noun(independent clause)-pronoun(dependent clause) agreement. It's using too many words. I think 90% of the errors could eliminated with simpler writing.

Or, if you like, the context matters:

Q. What if a patient experiences heavy bleeding?
A. They should see their gynecologist.

A. SEE A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY

(context, person is bleeding)

SuperPriceMart shoppers can now bring their cart to the west entrance for express check-out.

AISLE 12 IS NOW OPEN

(context, squelchy P.A., crowded SUPERPRICE★MART)

I like the life-insurance example, though.

Me, too.

The insurance adjusters can read our exquisitely written prose until the cows come home.

:D

UK: 'The '2nd Vienna School' were a prolific group of composers in early 20th-century Europe.'
US: 'The '2nd Vienna School' was a prolific group of composers in early 20th-century Europe.'

Whoah, I'm actually starting to feel like we should introduce the use of a new word, "themself," for reflexive agreement in sentences that would use "them" as a third-person singular. Um, for instance:

A good doctor needs to ask themself if the treatment is working.

I get hung up on this, but usually defer to reconstruction: Good Doctors need to ask themselves...

I don't think it's a question of introducing it. I use it and only realize it's 'wrong' when a spellchecker underlines it. more just a matter of telling English teachers / Microsoft word that it's gonna be accepted as a part of contemporary English and to stop being so prissy. 95% of Americans wouldn't notice anything weird about the doctor sentence if someone used it in the middle of a paragraph.

Hahaha oh crap, I already revived this thread last time to point the same thing out :(

iatee, seriously? I have never heard anyone say "themself" out loud in my life. I think most people just use "themselves" and we figure we all know what it means and it sounds less creepy than constantly saying "themself."

^^ Actually that might not be true -- it's a little hard to notice when people are speaking casually, but I guess I can think of people I know who'd say it the "themself" way

i thought people always did this?

Themself – thumbs up
They/their – yes please
Getting rid of the word 'whom' – oh please yes

Shaunna
to me

show details 2:35 AM (17 hours ago)


I was just browsing on digg.com and I came across an article. This paragraph makes no sense.

A 75-year-old Milwaukee woman visited a McDonald's at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 30 for lunch. As she was leaving, a stranger approached her to give her a hug. After asking her if they knew each other, the strange woman insisted they had met before and continued to small talk. The victim told the woman that her mother had just died. The suspect then asked her for her address because she said she wanted to send the woman flowers.

It's from this web site if you want to read it in context
http://us.mc1122.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=1812791596&da=0

In the fourth line I'm really not sure who the victim is referring to, the Milwaukee woman or the strange woman. I'm really baffled and the story could work either way. Let me know if this bothers you too.

igotabeefpas✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧
to Shaunna

show details 9:30 AM (10 hours ago)

The 'suspect' would be the 'strange woman' and the victim is the flower-recieving 'Milwaukee woman.' That is one confusing ¶ on the real. The problem the writer is suffering from is 'don't repeat yourself syndrome.' Having been told that it's 'boring' to read a story that uses the same word twice, they've made up a completely new pronoun, identity or signifier for each woman in every sentence. It was a frustrating read that made me feel like the only thing that could make me recover was a Toblerone.

Good call.

<3 Abbie

Shaunna
to me

show details 9:52 AM (10 hours ago)

A toblerone! that's what I need to make this all better. i like your thinking.

THAT was what my sister and I talked about for TWO HOURS today over the phone while I was packing boxes & cleaning. That paragraph and Toblerones.