singular "they": a practical objection

[cellio]

Some folks at work have been having the discussion/argument about the use of "they" as a singular pronoun. This usually boils down to a religious argument and hey, I know better, but today I sent the following message:

[We should be trying to communicate clearly, and sometimes language rules prevent that.]

I agree. This is why, when conventional language rules would dictate something that would make my writing harder to understand, I violate those rules. For example, I only place terminal punctuation inside a closing quotation mark if it is in fact part of the quoted text, because to do otherwise misleads the reader and is logically incorrect. That's not how the language rules evolved, but (fortunately) that's becoming a more common practice within the field of technical writing, and eventually we may be able to drag the rest of the English-writing world along with us.

This argument does not apply to singular "they", however. Or if it does, it doesn't apply the way you think it does, at least for some readers. If I see a well-crafted sentence that completely avoids the problem, I don't find myself thinking "wow, that was really unclear; he should have just said 'they'". Because it's well-crafted, I don't notice. That's good; one of the jobs of technical writing is to get out of the way so people can understand what you're writing about. On the other hand, every time I see a use of singular "they" that (I think) could have been easily avoided, it derails me in my reading -- exactly as an incorrect "it's" does. It distracts me from what I was doing -- absorbing communication -- and draws my attention to the writing itself. Further, that attention is negative; it lowers my opinion of the author or company whose work I'm reading. None of this is conscious and I can't will it away. I know I am not the only such reader.

While we should not necessarily write to the lowest common denominator, if one choice results in clear communication to everyone and another does not, we should follow the one that does, even if it's a little more work on our part. So quite aside from the (very real) religious arguments against singular "they", I hold that there is a practical reason to avoid it: it derails some readers and is not necessary.

Comments

[cellio]

And sometimes those aesthetic sensibilities have implications that people want to change badly enough that they'll accept inconsistency as a replacement. I'm old enough to remember that a generic doctor or scientist is "he" while a generic nurse or secretary is "she".

So yes, language is a big optimization problem factoring in logic, aesthetics, history, and evolving trends. I give priority to logic; others give priority
to history or current senses of aesthetics. Language is not static, and I'm going to lose this particular argument eventually. In the meantime, though, in my own writing I will strive to demonstrate that singular "they" isn't necessary, and maybe I'll inspire some people to follow that lead. I think using singular "they" (in formal written prose) is a sign of a bad writer, and I don't want to be seen as a bad writer.

[jducoeur]

I give priority to logic; others give priority to history or current senses of aesthetics. Language is not static, and I'm going to lose this particular argument eventually.

Yep, 'fraid so. I'm in the middle of a truly *delightful* course on linguistics from the Teaching Company (I really need to write a review of it), and one of the many explicit lessons from it is Language Is Not Logical. What's worse, he spends an entire lecture demonstrating that 18th century attempts to *make* English logical screwed it up even worse. (By trying to impose grammatical rules that didn't match actual practice, and only half-succeeding, resulting in more of a melange than it started with. He gives one fairly ordinary English sentence, and then demonstrates that it's composed of remnants from five different languages.)

Fun stuff, which just confirms me in my descriptivist biases. He reviews a really amazing number of different ways to contruct grammar; English and its quirks are pretty typical. (Albeit a bit stranger than most due to its history -- starting as proto-German, mixing in a lot of Old Norse grammar and then getting a ton of Norman French smushed in. The modern English tendency to neologize from other languages is *nothing* compared to some of what's happened in the distant past.)

As for the topic: I use "he", "they", "s/he" and "sie" rather inconsistently in this situation, depending mainly upon my audience. I've long since gotten fairly comfortable with the lack of current consensus on the subject...