singular they

Posted Apr 1, 2012 22:46 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: singular they by giraffedata
Parent article: Fedora release naming "is a" bit contentious

Pullum notes that Strunk and White, a prescriptive grammar which is about the closest we can come to an RFC, incontrovertibly pronounces "they" plural.

Strunk and White try to be prescriptivist, but they prescribe lots of things that – irrespective of the actual merit of the stuff they prescribe – they then don't actually adhere to themselves, in the selfsame book. This makes one wonder exactly how far prescriptivist grammar gets one. They should at the very least eat their own dog food.

If the actual RFCs were anything like Strunk and White we would still communicate by semaphore flag. The best one can do with a copy of Strunk and White is burn it for heat in winter.