Singular they

Singular they

Singular they is the use of they (or its inflected forms, such as them or their) to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability. It typically occurs in these situations:

• Indeterminate gender – when they refers to an individual person of unknown or unspecified sex, as in, for example, "One student failed their exam". This usage is known as epicene they.

• Indeterminate number – when they has no definite antecedent, or can be interpreted as referring to either a singular or plural entity. This usage is also known as generic they. For example, in "Anyone who thinks they have been affected should contact their doctor", they and their are within the scope of the universal, distributive quantifier anyone, and can be interpreted as referring to an unspecified individual or to people in general (notwithstanding the fact that "anyone" is strictly grammatically singular).

In some cases, they is used even when both the number and gender of the subject are known, but the identity of the person is generic, e.g. "If some guy beat me up, I'd leave them."

Though semantically singular or ambiguous, singular they remains morphologically and syntactically plural (e.g. it still takes plural forms of verbs).