Singular they is an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person pronoun in English. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, to refer to an unknown person, or to refer to every person of some group, in sentences such as:
This use of singular they had emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they. Singular they has been criticized since the mid-18th century by prescriptive commentators who consider it an error. Its continued use in modern standard English has become more common and formally accepted with the move toward gender-neutral language. Some early-21st-century style guides described it as colloquial and less appropriate in formal writing. However, by 2020, most style guides and English-learning websites, such as the APA, AP, CMOS, British Council etc. accepted the singular they as a personal pronoun. In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged for non-binary people, as in, for example, "This is my friend, Jay. I met them at work." They in this context was named Word of the Year for 2015 by the American Dialect Society, and for 2019 by Merriam-Webster. In 2020, the American Dialect Society also selected it as Word of the Decade for the 2010s.
Inflected forms and derivative pronouns Like the "singular you", "singular they" permits a singular antecedent, but is used with the same verb forms as plural they, and has the same inflected forms as plural they (i.e. them, their, and theirs), except that in the reflexive form, themself is sometimes used instead of themselves.
Themself is attested from the 14th to 16th centuries. Its use has been increasing since the 1970s or 1980s, though it is sometimes still classified as "a minority form". In 2002, Payne and Huddleston, in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, called its use in standard dialect "rare and acceptable only to a minority of speakers" but "likely to increase with the growing acceptance of they as a singular pronoun". It is useful when referring to a single person of indeterminate gender, where the plural form themselves might seem incongruous, as in:
"It is not an actor pretending to be Reagan or Thatcher, it is, in grotesque form, the person themself."
Regional preferences The Canadian government recommends themselves as the reflexive form of singular they for use in Canadian federal legislative texts and advises against using themself.
Usage
They with a singular antecedent goes back to the Middle English of the 14th century (slightly younger than they with a plural antecedent, which was borrowed from Old Norse in the 13th century), and has remained in use for centuries in spite of its proscription by traditional grammarians beginning in the mid-18th century. Informal spoken English exhibits universal use of the singular they. An examination by Jürgen Gerner of the British National Corpus published in 1998 found that British speakers, regardless of social status, age, sex, or region, used the singular they more often than the gender-neutral he or other options in the context of being anaphors after indefinite pronouns like "everybody" and "anybody".
Prescription of generic he He has been used with antecedents of indeterminate gender since the Old English period, as in the following:
"If any one did not know it, it was his own fault." "Every person who turns this page has his own little diary." The earliest known explicit recommendation by a grammarian to use the generic he rather than they in formal English is Ann Fisher's mid-18th century A New Grammar assertion that "The Masculine Person answers to the general Name, which comprehends both Male and Female; as, any Person who knows what he says." (Ann Fisher as quoted by Ostade) Nineteenth-century grammarians insisted on he as a gender-neutral pronoun on the grounds of number agreement, while rejecting "he or she" as clumsy, and this was widely adopted: e.g. in 1850, the British Parliament passed an act which provided that, when used in acts of Parliament "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females". Baskervill and Sewell mention the common use of the singular they in their An English Grammar for the Use of High School, Academy and College Class of 1895, but prefer the generic he on the basis of number agreement. Baskervill gives a number of examples of recognized authors using the singular they, including:
"Every one must judge according to their own feelings." "Had the Doctor been contented to take my dining tables as any body in their senses would have done ..." It has been argued that the real motivation for promoting the "generic" he was an androcentric world view, with the default sex of humans being male – and the default gender therefore being masculine. There is some evidence for this: Wilson wrote in 1560:
"... let us keepe a naturall order, and set the man before the woman for manners sake." "... the worthier is preferred and set before. As a man is set before a woman ..." And Poole wrote in 1646:
"The Masculine gender is more worthy than the Feminine." In spite of continuous attempts on the part of educationalists to proscribe singular they in favour of he, this advice was ignored; even writers of the period continued to use they (though the proscription may have been observed more by American writers). Use of the purportedly gender-neutral he remained acceptable until at least the 1960s, though some uses of he were later criticized as being awkward or silly, for instance when referring to:
Indeterminate persons of both sexes: "The ideal that every boy and girl should be so equipped that he shall not be handicapped in his struggle for social progress ..." Known persons of both sexes: "She and Louis had a game – who could find the ugliest photograph of himself."
Contemporary use of he to refer to a generic or indefinite antecedent
He is still sometimes found in contemporary writing when referring to a generic or indeterminate antecedent. In some cases, it is clear from the situation that the persons potentially referred to are likely to be male, as in:
"The patient should be informed of his therapeutic options." In some cases the antecedent may refer to persons who are only probably male or to occupations traditionally thought of as male:
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