I've always tried to use either gender-neutral pronouns (h/is, s/he) or gender-balanced pronouns (sprinkling in an even number of he's and she's), but both approaches always felt awkward. So I'm very much in favor of what I thought was only a recent trend of using they as a (supposedly ungrammatical) substitute for he/she.
Now I've discovered in this blog post on "singular they", that this is actually an ancient practice. I say that if it's good enough for the writers of the King James Bible, then it's good enough for the rest of us. If someone doesn't agree with this, then they can just duck off. <grin>
Hi Nick,
FWIW this has, in my memory, always been the case in UK English. I find it much more natural than sprinkling arbitrary (s)he type constructions throughout a piece.
Jim
Posted by: Jim Webber | September 14, 2006 at 05:38 AM