On 17-Aug-09, at 7:16 PM, Assembly for the Teaching of English  
Grammar wrote:

> It used to be always accepted to use the masculine pronoun when  
> referring to groups, but modern political correctness and inclusion  
> has made that harder to do.

It has nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do  
with the fact that that's the way it is in English. As Mark Liberman  
writes, "singular they has routinely been used throughout the history  
of English, by all the best writers, until certain subcases were  
artificially turned into 'errors' by self-appointed experts.  
Successively less discriminating pseudo-authorities then generalized  
the proscription in successively sillier ways, although they have  
largely been ignored by the users of the language."

Similarly, Merriam Webster's online dictionary has this to say. "The  
use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite  
gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and  
writing, even in literary and formal contexts."

There is no evidence that anybody thought twice about this until the  
mid 1700s when Ann Fisher wrote, "The Masculine Person answers to the  
general Name, which comprehends both Male and Female; as, any Person  
who knows what he says."

> Pronoun/antecedent agreement is what it is.

But 'they' is not always plural, just the way 'you' isn't, so there  
is no agreement problem.

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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