singular "they"

since medieval times "they," "their," and "them" have been used as singular pronouns (for example, Jill Ruckelshaus's "No one should have to dance backward all their lives"). "'They' has been in continuous use as a singular pronoun in English for over 600 years. Two centuries of vigorous opposition, including concerted efforts by the education and publishing industries and an 1850 Act of Parliament declaring the masculine pronoun to be the proper third singular generic pronoun, have not eradicated it" (Miriam Meyers). Singular "they" is now accepted or endorsed by many authorities: Oxford English Dictionary ("The pronoun referring to everyone is often plural"); Chicago Manual of Style; American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ("may be the only sensible choice in informal style"); American Heritage Book of English Usage ("The alternative to the masculine generic with the longest and most distinguished history in English is the third-person plural pronoun"); the National Council of Teachers of English ("In all but strictly formal usage, plural pronouns have become acceptable substitutes for the masculine singular"; Random House Dictionary II; Webster's Third New International Dictionary (their definition of everyone reads in part, "Usually referred to by the third person singular ... but sometimes by a plural personal pronoun" and they give the example of "Everyone had made up their minds"). Singular "they" was proscribed in 1746 on the theory that the masculine gender was "more comprehensive" (whatever that means) than the feminine. But it wasn't until the 19th century that prescriptive grammarians tried to enforce it; many writers continued to use singular "they." Casey Miller and Kate Swift (The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing) say that "the continued and increased use of singular they in writing as well as speech—and the restitution of the status it enjoyed before grammarians arbitrarily proscribed it—now seems inevitable." Among the many writers who have used singular "they" are Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, Anaïs Nin, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Gaskell, Agatha Christie, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, George Bernard Shaw, William Congreve, Thomas Malory, William Thackeray, L.E. Landon, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, W.H. Auden, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jonathan Swift, Lawrence Durrell, and Doris Lessing. You can find it today in the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. ("You" is also used as both singular and plural, and no major campaign has been mounted to change it—people seem able to understand when it is singular and when it is plural.)