"they"The third person generic singular use of
they goes back to Middle English. The earliest example I have seen is in Chaucer. It occurs in the King James version of the Bible. many reputable authors use: e.g., Swift and Jane Austen. The
MWDEU as usual has a good entry on it (
link). Although, I see the second page has a scanning mishap. The book is cheap, under $20 IIRC, on Amazon, and worth having in any person's library. As opposed to most usage and style guides, it gives the history of the prescription as well as a rather neutral view on the validity of same.
I, personally, wouldn't use it in formal written English, but I have no problem with it in informal written and spoken English.
And, just for the record, I don't believe there are no usage or grammar rules, but i do think that most prescriptivists don't know their passive voice from a hole in the ground and couldn't parse or diagram a sentence to save their lives. There are rules and people (both native speakers and foreign) make grammatical errors all the time. It's just that insisting that one oughtn't to end a sentence with a preposition or not split an infinitive is so much poppycock. Oh, and even sillier stuff like the that/which restrictive/non-restrictive relative clause ukaze. Talk about OFism. Yup, that's me.
"they"
