Talk:Singular they/Archive 2005-05

Singular they vs. the pronoun one

"Singular they is common in informal speech and becoming more common in formal speech. It is used because there is no singular gender-neutral pronoun in English that is considered appropriate for people."

Excuse me, but this is simply untrue. The singular gender-neutral that is appropriate for people is "one". "He" is masculine, "she" is feminine, and "one" can be either neuter or ambiguous. Aside from which, even "it" would be more appropriate than a singular "they"; though rather rude, it's at least grammatically correct. --Corvun 04:10, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"They" refers to a specific person, "one" doesn't — as you say, using "it" is rather ... distancing? Not sure if that's the best word to use, but try pointing at someone and saying "it walked the dog". 219.89.178.158 11:19, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Whether this article is appropriate to an encyclopedia

Wikipedia is not a usage guide! --LMS

But it is an encyclopedia, and mention of "singular they" is relevant to the discussion of English language, and in particular English grammar -- I'm not saying "use the singular they" or "don't use the singular they", I'm just noting it is a phenomena of (at least some people's) English grammar. -- Simon J Kissane

I'm not convinced. You are talking about English usage. There is a lot of encyclopedic information you can give about English usage. The issue about "singular they" is one that belongs (is always treated) in an English language usage guide. --LMS

No, I'm not talking about English usage, at least as I understand it. English usage is prescriptive, "how you should write/speak", while all I'm trying to do is descriptive "how people do in fact write/speak". And it's not just an issue like affect vs. effect -- it can be related to issues such as gender-related language, and also it deals with a rather fundamental part of a language (its grammar, its pronouns). Are you saying that the features of the English language are somehow off-limits for an encyclopedia? I don't think so, especially since its not like we have any space limits here. -- Simon J Kissane

If you'll look at your Fowler, you'll see that very often his guide is prescriptive, but just as often it's descriptive, and a lot of time there is blurring between the two. So, yes, I am absolutely insisting that descriptions of English language usage are off-limits for Wikipedia--except when the issues impinge more or less directly on some issue of interest outside language. (That happens a lot, for example, in philosophy.) --LMS

I have to agree with Simon on this one.

Even if you assume that this is a usage issue, we are allowing other kinds of procedural knowledge -- what is it about language that makes it off limits?

But, I'm convinced that language use issues ALWAYS impinge on some issue of interest outside of language. I don't think meaning can be separated from the complex web of human behavior in which it is embedded, nor can use. I know this is a somewhat controversial position, but I think it is obvious in this case, that there are issues related to the feminist movement, gender inequality, and the politicization of language, tensions between academic language use and popular use, etc. These issues are real, and are related to historical facts. There is no reason that we can't do several things here: 1) Describe the way the singular they is used, 2) Describe the controversies surrounding it's use, 3) Describe the history of the words use. MRC

I'm with Simon here too, with reservations: so long as the article documents the issue and controversy of the singular "they", and covers its history, it is relevant and useful. Similarly, I'd like to see the history of attempts at gender-neutral pronouns, and some coverage of that controversy. The last paragraph here, though, does stray a bit into prescription, and might be reworded. --Lee Daniel Crocker

The point of the last paragraph is that in English people will say things like "The caller said they wanted to see you", but not "John said they wanted to see you". You can only use "singular they" with an indeterminate person, not with someone who can be identified with as being of one gender or another. If how I've said it is unclear, or too prescriptive, feel free to reword it. -- Simon J Kissane

As a non-native speaker, I find this article very interesting, and think it should stay (except for some rewording, maybe). An example wouldn't hurt, maybe from Jane Austen's work. --Magnus Manske

Look, do you all support just throwing the doors open to all the entries about English usage that you can see in Fowler or Garner or any other English usage guides? Or do you think this is, for some reasons you cite, an exception? --LMS

Well, frankly, yes. If the article is about English usage and not solely prescriptive, then it's part of human knowledge, and belongs here every bit as much as articles about poker strategy and cooking techniques. --LDC

I alao support "throwing open the doors," as you put it. I think we should only allow articles which document both sides of controversial usage issues, and which otherwise present useful information, but I don't see why "grammatical" information (in the widest possible sense) out be excluded from a compendium of human knowledge.

That said, I agree with LDC that proscriptive usage pages, which say things like: "Never use a preposition to end a sentence with," should not be allowed here (except on commentary pages). We are building a compendium of knowledge, not style advice. If however someone wants to describe the historical process whereby the prohibition on ending sentences with prepositions was imported into English from Latin, I think that is both useful and worthwhile. If that article also describes the way that controversy has spilled over into the present day, I'm all for that too.

If on the other hand, there are good reasons to think that allowing this kind of page will somehow dammage the wikipedia project I'd be glad to hear about them, and change my position. Absent such reasons, I think we should allow this, and just let it take it's course. If it results in the development of bad, ore even just useless articles, we can always decide to delete them later. --MRC

C'mon, am I the only one here who thinks that we should not make Wikipedia into a usage guide? I still very firmly believe we shouldn't.

But let me begin by making some concessions.

• It's pretty obvious that we will want plenty of detailed information about the English language qua language--primarily, its history and how it is distinguished from other languages. This will necessarily touch on some matters of grammar and usage.
• Plenty of entries in a typical usage guide (or for that matter, a typical dictionary) contain information that can also be found in a good encyclopedia. For example, the first page I flipped to upon opening my copy of Fowler (ISBN 0-19-281389-7) is "induction, deduction."
• It is doubtless appropriate to discuss some controversies about usage (as in the case of "singular they") because they illustrate some other issue that is appropriate to discuss on Wikipedia. This occurs not infrequently in philosophy, for one thing.

Now, all that being conceded, is there any good reason to include in an encyclopedia any other of the many entries in the likes of Fowler?

Well, first of all, I don't buy this distinction between descriptive and prescriptive. If you will actually examine some usage guides, you will find that there is a lot of descriptive language that does double duty making implied prescriptions. So discussion on that topic is neither here nor there.

There is a number of good reasons to avoid purely usage-guide type entries in an encyclopedia.

First, the purposes of using the references are different! Totally different! This is my main reason for wanting to avoid these kind of entries in Wikipedia, and it's why I feel strongly about the issue. This is also why hitherto one generally has not seen combination encyclopedia-cum-usage-guides, but instead just the one or just the other. So, what are the purposes in question? The purpose of an encyclopedia has been to give people an introduction to all different areas of non-semantic human knowledge. The purpose of usage guides, grammars, and dictionaries UGD for short) is to teach people how to use language. One consults a UGD to get a definition, to learn how to use a word, to learn how to phrase a sentence--and to learn such things without being further burdened with a lot of other information that is irrelevant to that purpose. There is a natural division of labor among different types of reference works. One goes to one type of reference work specifically in order to avoid being presented with the information that is contained in the other types. Why should someone come to Wikipedia to look up how to use a certain word when he can more easily, with fewer distractions, look the word up in a dictionary or usage guide?

Second, having a lot of discussion of the usage of words distracts us from our central purpose. (In fact, I have lately grudgingly come around to the view that including the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, etc., in Wikipedia is a similar distraction. Maybe a subject for a column.) One of the reasons Wikipedia has been so successful, mind you, is precisely that we have stayed true to our central purpose, disallowing the project to become a system of stubs and dictionary definitions like the "Probert Encyclopedia" you can find online, and also disallowing it to become a mere discussion forum. (Not to say this particular discussion is bad--I think it's essential we talk about this.) People like focusing on one thing, and that's one reason why Wikipedia is popular. On the Internet, where anyone can do and organize practically anything, specialization is a good thing!

But, you might say, "Aren't you begging the question? Why not think usage guide entries are part of our central purpose?" Well, whatever else our purpose is, we can agree that it is at least to reproduce the contents of a traditional, high-quality encyclopedia. Now, if people start writing zillions of usage entries, this is going to distract us from that main purpose. Just scan the entries in Fowler, for example. Here are some entries: -some; somersault; sorrow; include, comprise; inchoate; continual, continuous; constructive; brake, break. Some of these name subjects that, named differently, we'll want encyclopedia articles about. Having the usage entries alongside them is going to confuse people. Frankly, I don't want to see usage articles alongside the other articles, because I don't care about explaining or reading about matters of usage when I'm looking at Wikipedia. I would go to xrefer.com or some other website if I want information on usage.

I'm also rather worried that some people, who fancy themselves experts about the English language, would start devoting a lot of their Wikipedia time to those entries and leave the substantive, non-semantic entries unattended. Similarly, I'm worried that new people will arrive at Wikipedia, see all the activity on the usage entries, and, not sharing your views about the purpose of an encyclopedia, think that the project is just confused. It really would look confused, or conflicted, and confusing, to a lot of people who do have clear distinctions in their minds between encyclopedias and other kinds of reference works.

Third, the requirements of a usage guide are quite different from those of an encyclopedia; what might be right for a usage guide is generally out of place for an encyclopedia entry on that same topic. We'd have to work out a lot of new guidelines for usage entries, and work out what to do when there's significant amounts of both usage information and encyclopedic information. (Which comes first in the article?)

Fourth, there's a comparative advantage to your starting up an English usage wiki, if you like. Look, if you really want to have an open content usage guide, then make one yourself. Wouldn't it be better to have all this work separate, "physically," as it were, from Wikipedia, so the name space isn't crowded and so that people can look in one reference for one kind of info and in the other for the other kind?

So, why don't you just set up an English usage wiki? As a bonus, you can make it a dictionary too, if you're keen on making a wiki dictionary.

Larry Sanger

I have several wiki related ideas in the works, and I could set up an alternative English usage wiki if that would be helpful and would alleviate some of the pressure you seem to think the inclusion of usage info might have on this wiki.

On the other hand, I think your fears are unfounded. I'm also not clear on the distinction between semantic information and "non-semantic" information. If meaning is intimately related to a whole belief system, and is also intimately related to use, semantic information is behavioral information, and is therefor also "non-semantic" information.

I don't suggest that we become a usage guide either -- why would we want to do that? Instead I suggest that we allow usage guide type articles, but require that they include what you would call "real" information. In this case the singular they should include real information about how this construction has been used, and the political movements which surround it. I would suggest that it is also reasonable to say things like "group X" opposes this use for reasons A, B and C, but group Y supports it for reasons F, G, and H.

I agree that saying things which report to be factual and descriptive, but are really proscriptive should be discouraged (especially if there's no scholarly consensus). For example, I don't think the Wikipedia should say about the singular they: "many find the use of this construction to be awkward and illegitimate" unless it also says that many believe it to be fine, and actually support it's use in order to neutralize an implied male bias. This is what you call NPOV , and though I still have some objection to the terminology, I agree that it is important to be fair about the positions we cover.

Also, I don't think this is going to overly clutter the name space. Nor would the inclusion of usage and even (I know this is controversial) dictionary type information, take up important space. Wikipedia is not paper, after all. I know there's a danger related to this, in that it could end up being all we do, but I'm pretty sure the only reason that traditional encyclopedias don't contain articles about the history of English usage, and about the meanings of words is that they are already long and expensive to produce, and could easily become too long and too expensive.

That is not to say that I'm against some kind of separation of these things, but I also think there are natural interactions and the separation could be accomplished by something like Magnus's alternative namespace code -- which would then allow for a much simpler and more natural connection between these related types of knowledge. Anyway, just a couple of thoughts to consider. MRC

This article does not explain how to use "they", it describes the history and background of a controversy in language. The fact we have this article that has to do with language does not mean Wikipedia will turn into a usage guide or dictionary. Ellmist

Two unrelated points:

I agree that an encyclopedia shouldn't become a language guide. But certrainly an article on controversies of English grammar would be an appropriate article.

Second, I'm not sure this article is really NPOV. It seems defend this horrid usage. And the "you are" singular isn't using a plural verb form; it's that in the second person, the singular and plural verb forms are the same. That's not the same thing. --Eric

It originates from a plural (the old singular was thou art), but that could be changed. I don't see how the article counts as biased. When it talks about a centuries old usage, it is talking about forms like "An old friend came by." - "What did they want?"; it neither advocates nor condemns usage for political correctness.

Article should quote an external grammar guide

This article would be better if it quoted an external grammar guide. Rather than saying "you can use they in this manner, but not in that manner", it should instead quote someone else as saying essentially the same thing.

It's certainly untrue to say that singular they was introduced for PC reasons, but it could be claimed that it was reintroduced for PC reasons. My understanding is that the usage almost died during the 18th century and is only recently regaining popularity - and surely women's rights is part of that language change? -Martin

Quoting an external grammar guide would certainly be a good idea - nobody really cares about our (wikipedia users') opinions, but if Fowler (or whoever) says we can do X but not Y, then that's of interest to people. Most of the rest I don't know about, but I scrawled a little more on the h2g2 article and so on on your talk page. --Camembert

I personally use they and their as the singular personal pronoun when I'm around the kind of person who is likely to pounce on the usage of he or his. I cater to their political views only because I hate having the conversation diverted to a discussion of sexism (or imputations thereof) when the current topic is more important (at least, to me). Otherwise, when talking to a less strident (or more traditional) person, I don't bother to cater to his political views. --Ed Poor

Here are some usage notes from dictionary.com, which might be quotable in part at least: usage note on they, usage note on he, usage note on she. -Martin

That some people use singular they naturally

Since I last looked here, the introductory paragraph has changed to say that it's used only by people with problems with gender-specific pronouns. That's not my experience; some people fall into it naturally in informal speech and readily agree, when "corrected", that "he" is preferable. The rest of the article is more neutral in this respect, so I'll change the first paragraph. -- Toby 04:22 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

Singular they as a substitute for it?

It is used because the only singular gender-neutral pronoun in English, it, is generally considered inappropriate for people (except cometimes infants).

I'm not convinced by this sentence - it seems to be implying that the natural thing to do would be to use it, but people avoid that pronoun because it is inappropriate, selecting singular they instead. But as Toby says, often it's unconscious, and where it is conscious it is generally (in my experience) a replacement for the generic male rather than for the pronoun it. MyRedDice 09:17, 21 Feb 2003 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Furthermore, no one seriously calls an infant "it". No one. Ortolan88 17:40, 21 Feb 2003 (UTC)

Not the case. "It" is often used to refer to infants where the sex is unknown or not obvious. Perhaps in America people tend to default to "he", but I can't say I've ever heard it in the UK. 129.234.4.10 03:28, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see it US schoolbooks from the early 20th century. (My grandma has a ton of these.) -- Toby 06:28 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

The early 20th century was 100 years ago, it says here. Your grandma may not have had electric lights to read those schoolbooks by. Ortolan88 07:43, 3 Mar 2003 (UTC)

They're not all contemporaneous with her. But even the later ones which are -- no, she didn't read them with electric lights at first. She got those later thanks to the Rural Electrification Project. (Do we really not have an article on that, or do I just not know the correct name?) -- Toby 06:53 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

Then I just wrote it badly -- I didn't mean to imply that "it" would be natural. Let me try my hand at writing it again. -- Toby 06:28 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

Singular we

I'd like to point out a related topic I haven't seen covered in wikipedia:

- "Singular we" as a polite form of addressing.

Can someone proficient in English write an article please?

Usage example (sorry, my language is not very British where it is expected to be): Long time ago I've seen the following cartoon. A ragged old lady picks flowers around the Buckingham Palace into a bouquet with a tag "Happy Birthday to Her Majesty". A policeman approaches her with: "Aren't we the lady who sent a dozen of Royal Railroads teaspoons to the birth of Prince Albert?" -- mikkalai

If someone wants to add something appropriate to we, that'd be nice. :) Martin

My fault: it seems the usage I described has already been covered in dictionaries (see below). ---mikkalai

"We ...4. Used instead of you in direct address, especially to imply a patronizing camaraderie with the addressee: How are we feeling today?"

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution restricted in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

Singular second-person 'we' does indeed often sound patronising or condescending: "aren't we looking cute today?" I agree it should be mentioned on the We article. I am trying to think of a use in which it is polite. Mbp 02:42, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Relevance of the French pronoun on?

What the heck does the French section have to do with anything? "On" can be thought of as replacing "we" or "you" or "people", all of which are already gender-neutral (in French as well as English). This article is about "they".

GGano

On in French can be thought of as having a similar meaning as one in English. For example:

One would be wise to make one's bed.

Irrelevant stuff

I was reading through the article, and there seems to be some stuff which has to do with gender-neutral language modification, but nothing really to do with the "singular they" per se. For example:

"In the latter case, the most usual thing to do is to recast the sentence in the plural ("Doctors might find themselves...") or second person ("If you're a doctor, you might find yourself...")"

These are examples of the "plural they" and the "singular you," not of the "singular they." Such recasting is a way that advocates of gender-neutral language get around the shortcomings of the "singular they" and reasons why opponents of such language modification feel that it's an udue burden for people to have to "recast" their sentences in order to be politically correct. But yeah - I think Wikipedia can present both sides of that debate in the gender-neutral language article, and that this article should be confined to stuff which is directly relevant to the "singular they." --Blackcats 00:15, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You make a valid point, but you must keep in mind that there's more than one side to this debate, and that several of the sides are specific, hence directly relevant, to the issue of "singular they." (In a sense, there's more than one debate here: whether gender-neutral language is worthwhile; whether singular "they" is grammatical; whether its gender-neutrality trumps its supposed ungrammaticality; whether it's best to use singular "they," "he or she," general "he," or a contrived pronoun; whether it's better to avoid that debate when possible by recasting the sentence in a naturally gender-neutral form (by pluralizing or second-person-ifying); and so on. Many of these debates are specific to English, and to the nature of singular "they," so should be discussed here.) Ruakh 14:35, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)