Why does Fluther use "they" to address a jelly even though there is only one user?

He/she is very inconvenient and unnecessarily specific. I’m all for adopting “they” as an alternative.

@dxs If you take a look at my previous posts, you’ll see how frequently I use “he/she”. I’m quite OK with “he/she”.

Singular they has been standard English for centuries. It was used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Thackery, and even the King James Bible. You can read more about it here.

@SavoirFaire Thanks for the info. This is the first time I got to know “they” can be treat as singular.

“They” is my preferred pronoun. I do not go by “he” or “she” online or offline. I appreciate when places like Fluther are linguistically inclusive of non-binary persons (whether consciously or unconsciously.)

When I am uncertain of someone’s else’s preferred pronoun, I default to “they” until otherwise informed. Like dxs, I also find “he/she” and “he or she” to be clunky and not as descriptive as one might think.

@muppetish I don’t use “they” for fear of violating the grammar. I never know “they” can be used as singular.

As I noted in the class I taught this morning, there are no grammar police and the “rules” aren’t laws; nobody is going to arrest you if you make a faux pas. The English language is constantly in flux and many “rules” are actually fairly flexible as @SavoirFaire indicated in his link to the article on singular they.

Most English professors have ticks. I had one literature instructor who would go on a witch hunt for dangling modifiers. My linguistics professor, on the other hand, said that dangling modifiers were small potatoes in the grand scheme of “mistakes” one might make.

As long as you are able to communicate efficiently and fluidly with others, does it really matter whether the grammar is strictly speaking “correct”?

When I was young English teachers were very strict and quite font of “witch hunt”. No students were allowed to make any grammatical errors. The teachers always explained their doing as: “when you speak to foreigners with grammatical errors, they won’t understand what you’re saying”.
Even Fluther has very strick writing standard. So… it’s not very surprising why I come to fear grammatical errors.

I forgot to add that because of that teaching style, only students who find a practical use for English have the will-power to study it. Others just see it as “another subject to learn” and have no intention to study it properly. Some even try to avoid English like plague.

Completely understandable! I think that’s a problem with how second language classes are taught. While descriptive grammar (such as subject-verb-object) is an essential part of communicating efficiently to avoid ambiguity, prescriptive grammar (dangling modifiers, never split infinitives, etc.) can be problematic and confusing and contribute to the notion that there is a Standard English.

Of course, not all English instructors make this distinction and they can, at times, rely far too heavily on enforcing “Standard English”. Situations where students would prefer to avoid learning a second language dishearten me.

Sorry for derailing the question and moving off-topic from Fluther-specific issues, but I am quite passionate about teaching English and am engaged to a TESOL minor. We have discussions about these things on the regular.

Although it is technically incorrect grammar to use “they” as an indefinite singular pronoun, it is a very common usage, especially when spoken. Examples:

“Someone’s on the phone, and they want to speak to you.”

“If the person who did this thinks they can get away with it…”

“If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.

This is a convention which seems to have migrated to the written word on Fluther, especially on the TJBM threads.

@Yetanotheruser See my post above. It is not technically incorrect. Singular they is standard English, and the view that it is incorrect is a classic case of hypercorrection.

@muppetish Pray tell me what, kind sir, is a dangling modifier?

@Adagio I’m not very good at explaining linguistics; Purdue OWL does a much better job explaining it than I can.

I don’t know but evidently I make “Them” (Fluther) weak in the knees.

Classic dangling modifier, attributed to Groucho Marx;

I shot an elephant standing in my pajamas.

But how did the elephant get into your pajamas?

Should be: It.

:-)

Thanks for the link @muppetish.