Artificial introduction of “they”

Introduction

I have repeatedly written about the use and, particularly, abuse of “they”, e.g. in [1] and some texts that backlink there.

A particular issue is that many uses of “they” seem to have been artificially introduced or introduced in a very incompetent manner, in that they replace perfectly good standard formulations without “they” that already were “gender neutral” or otherwise beyond reasonable reproach even by those who consider “gender neutrality” something worth the effort (I am emphatically not among them). These uses harm the language without even an imaginary benefit.

Hand in hand, my subjective impression is that formulations that, in some sense, have a slot that can be abused for “they” are disproportionately commonly used relative those that do not, both in absolute terms and in comparison with the past. (Contrast e.g. “someone on their way to X” with “someone headed to X”, “someone going to X”, or, even, “someone X-bound”. The last might be disputed for other reasons, but remains a lesser evil than a contorted “they”.) Whether this is a matter of poverty of formulation in the user (in combination with an abuse of “they”) or a deliberate attempt to create and use such slots, is rarely possible to tell. However, the result is the same in both cases—poverty and a spurious “they”.

While I try to apply Hanlon’s Razor, the frequency of such abuses is such that I cannot suppress the suspicion of a deliberate pushing of “they” for some purpose other than “gender neutrality”. What that purpose would be is a matter of speculation, but an extermination of all other second-person pronouns to further some ideological or political goal, e.g. of anti-individualism, is a possibility.

I stress that such deliberate pushing, if present, need not be present among all, a majority, or even a large plurality of users. More likely, as with so many other Leftist issues, it is a matter of a comparatively small group of manipulators and a much larger group of useful idiots, which might, even, include innocent imitators. (Note that language learning is largely imitative and that even those who already know a language can be strongly and unconsciously affected by what they read/hear from others.)

Terminology and disclaimers

It is understood that what is said about “they” applies similarly to “their”, “theirs”, whatnot, when relevant—and vice versa. Ditto, other pronouns.

As I do not live in an English-speaking country, my exposure to some types of sources/settings/scenarios/whatnot is mostly from works of fiction, e.g. TV series. Real-life versions can differ, especially, as the woke mind-poison seems more common among fiction creators than in the population at large. (And might differ from group to group, e.g. based on age, level of indoctrination, or country-specific version of English.) Most non-fiction encounters come from sources like writings on the Internet and comparatively recent books. (Even in books just a few decades old, the situation was far better.)

Examples given are usually representative and not actual quotes. (Indeed, some real-life examples are so silly or illogical that I have problems remembering them, just like “to be or not to be” is easier to remember than “at ex to apple be”.)

There is a considerable overlap with other texts, as certain types of examples and ideas naturally recur. A key point of this text, unlike others, is to stress the artificialness of “they” in so many uses.

Note that I have no objections to “they” when used correctly—as demonstrated by repeated own uses in this text.

I note here that “he”, not “they”, is the correct pronoun for the generic second person singular, and will not address this again in the continuation. See older texts for more on this and some cases where e.g. “she” might be preferable.

Examples

(In addition to those already given.)

1. The ever more common use of “they” to imply or replace any singular pronoun, including cases where the perfectly “gender neutral” use of “it” has a long history, avoids a confusion of numbers, and reduces the risk of mistaken references.

   This in several variations (with some overlap):

   Firstly, the use of “they” when a singular “it” is already established, as with animals that have not been awarded a “he” or “she”. Two important and overlapping special cases are (a) words like “shape” and “figure” that are “its” but often refer to a human, (b) natural “its” (e.g. computer accounts) that often are associated with humans.

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   Side-note:

   Consider “Jack saw a shape [figure, whatnot] in the distance”, where the shape might be a human, an animal, a statue, or something else yet. To follow up with “X began to move” is strictly only allowed when X=“it”. A leap to “he” or “she” might be excused as a tolerable sloppiness, if the “he” or “she” is a near certainty, but a “they” would only be so if the figure could similarly be presumed to contain more than one individual, e.g. if the shape was formed by a swarm of bees. Even in such cases, “it” is preferable unless some intervening switch has taken place, e.g. with a “it was a man” (“it was a swarm of bees”) that allow “he” (“they”) as a reference to “a man” (“a swarm of bees”) instead of “a shape”.

   Likewise, a computer account is neither a “he” nor a “they”—it is and remains an “it”. If in doubt, there is no guarantee that a computer account has any physical user at all, nor that it does not have more than one user, putting similar limits on tolerable sloppiness as above. However, here the issue is even clearer because a shape can be human while a computer account can not.

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   Secondly, replacing standard phrases using “it” with formulations using “they”. For instance, if someone is interested in who had just called, the typical, traditional, and perfectly “gender neutral” question is “Who was it?” (to boot, with some good backups, e.g. “Who was that?” and “Who called?”). Today, the idiocy of “Who were they?” seems as or more likely. I would be unsurprised to see “They are raining.” replace “It is raining.” within my lifetime.

   Thirdly, a blanket use of “they” for any and all individual persons—even those who do not have “preferred pronouns” to that effect and even those whose sex and “gender” are known to all involved parties.

   Fourthly, the use of “they” for a singular of a collective nature (for which “it” is almost always correct and preferable; see excursion), as with companies, bands, teams, government agencies, whatnot, which are ever and ever again referred to as “they”—and even in contexts where it simply does not make sense or might be an outright source of confusion. Take a hypothetical “The FBI had a shoot-out with the bank robbers and they won.”. Assuming that “they” can refer to the FBI, who won? The FBI or the bank robbers? This is the more annoying as a very simple re-write would make “they” grammatically acceptable and increase the precision of language. Above, simply replacing “FBI” with “FBI agents” would remove the grammar issue (but not the ambiguity) and give an account that is closer to the truth.

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   Side-note:

   Here, it can be argued that sloppiness in language, a failure to be aware of ambiguities, whatnot, is a greater issue than abuse of “they”; however, the abuse increases the risk, both through creating more potential cases and through, in my impression, weakening the ability of learners to think correctly in terms of numbers, pronouns, concordance with verbs, and similar.

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   Side-note:

   Someone could conceivably argue for “FBI” as a short-hand for “FBI agents”; however, this fails on too many cases where this does not make sense or would cause even worse ambiguities—especially, as “FBI” must be allowed to exist as a reference to the FBI as a whole or in a more abstract sense. How e.g. would a sentence like “Two FBI agents shot two other FBI agents and were fired by the FBI.” be handled?

   However, in as far as such use is tolerated, I can suggest a rule-of-thumb check: Add a “most of the” and see whether the claim still seems logically reasonable (regardless of whether it is factually true; other variations, e.g. “some of”, can work equally well). For instance, “[most of the] team won the game” will hardly ever make sense, as this is almost always something that the team either does as a collective or not all—and we have an “it”. For instance, “[most of the] team is taller than six foot” works much better, something individual is under discussion, and the reverse notion that the team would collectively be taller than six foot is hardly ever reasonable—and we might, if we tolerate such use, let a “they” pass. (But a disambiguation and issue-dodging formulation using e.g. “team members” over “team” is the superior solution.)

   More generally, in the opposite direction, and for off-topic reasons, I recommend restraint when using formulations that imply that e.g. an organization performs actions, let alone holds opinions or values. It is, for instance, better to say that a press-speaker or an FBI director made a certain claim than that the FBI did so. (Assuming truthfulness, of course.) Likewise, chances are that an individual agent does not speak for the agency as a whole, and for someone who has spoken to an FBI agent to claim that “the FBI told me” could be extremely misleading.

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   Fifthly, the replacement of various other pronouns. The above “backup” of “Who was that?” is one example of “that” being replaced; a better example is e.g. “Who might that be?” before the call is taken, where many today would use the idiocy of “Who might they be?”. Ditto e.g. the complete absurdity of replacing “That might be John.” with “They might be John.”. (I opt for “various other pronouns”, because I overlooked “that” during my original writing and do not know what other cases I might have overlooked even now.)

2. Using odd and more complicated formulations that seem to have no other purpose than to force or enable a “they”. Take a question like “Did you meet the winner?”. Well, why go with something that obvious, when you can use “The winner, did you meet them?”. Similarly, contrast “I met an old high-school friend.” with “I met an old friend. I went to high-school with them.”.

   These cases often go back to a failure to build natural phrases and might, partially, instead be explained by a naive writer’s wish to artificially minimize sentence length or complexity, in combination with incompetent pronoun use. The “I met [...]” above is a semi-strong example. A stronger example is “I have a friend who runs a store.” vs. “I have a friend. They run a store.”, which could be an artificial pushing of “they” or could be rooted in the belief that the typical adult reader cannot handle sentences more complex than “See Spot run.”. (However, even this more innocuous explanation only works when “they” is abused to identify someone of known sex, who by rights should be a “he” or a “she”.)

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   Side-note:

   Such chopping of sentences makes matters harder, not easier, for an even remotely typical reader, as the overall thought is just as long and complex and the support from a strong sentence is removed. This, especially, when the result is ungrammatical in the manner of many journalists, whose punctuation could stem from a game of pin-the-donkey: “I have a friend. Who runs a store. In New York. Next to a subway station.”

   (Should I err in the other direction, do not jump to the conclusion that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.)

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   Addendum:

   After the original writing, I seemed to ever again find real examples that are far better illustrations than those improvised-by-me above. Consider e.g. the comic strip “Shoe” for 2019-12-01 and the partial quote “how someone could talk if they didn’t have a brain”. Here, the obvious formulation is “how someone could talk without a brain”. Not only does that avoid the question of whether to substitute a hated-by-the-Left “he” with an ungrammatical and de-individualizing “they”, but it is also shorter and rolls easier off the tongue. As a bonus, the (very legitimate, if unpolitical) question of whether a written-in-real-life-but-spoken-in-universe sentence should prefer “didn’t” or “did not” is avoided.

   I have even seen variations where someone uses “someone” (or a similar singular word) with a verb in the singular and immediately, within the same sentence, switches to a superfluous “they” and a further verb in the plural. Here, I have not kept a specific example, but consider something like “Someone eats porridge and then they go to sleep.” over the superior “Someone eats porridge and then goes to sleep.” as well as, with a blurring of verbs, a variation with “ate” and “went”. (In both cases, the use of “they” is idiotic, but the singular and plural verb conjugations only differ in the first case.)

   As an aside, the “Shoe” example is also interesting in that “Shoe” appears to tend slightly to the Conservative side in the net. At a minimum, it avoids the excessive and naive (pseudo-)Liberalism that plagues so many other strips. Such examples open the door for Hanlon’s Razor.

   In a coincidence, the joke of the strip is highly political: The speaker points to his childhood doubts about the realism of “The Wizard of Oz”, which are resolved by the implied-to-be-brainless presidential candidates in front of him.

   I also note the issue of less seemingly-contorted-in-order-to-abuse-“they” cases, where a classification as several-candidate-formulations-exist might be fairer, but where the candidate involving a third-person pronoun, in combination with an abuse of “they”, seems to be picked disproportionately often. Consider “a careless opponent will lose before he knows it” vs. “[...] before knowing it”, where the former is picked as a legitimate base but illegitimately distorted into “[...] before they know it” (representative of a whole family of “he Xs”/“they X” vs. “Xing” cases).

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3. Pushing combinations of “everyone” (“every”, “anyone”, and similar words) and “they”. Consider a school teacher speaking to a class and a “Does everyone have their books?”. Apart from the disputable use of “their” (grammatical plural) with “everyone” (grammatical singular), the entire formulation is awkward and misleading: The teacher is speaking to the class and should, then, use the second person to begin with—not the third person. This the more so, as the second person does not have any “gender” issues. Try “Do you all have your books?” instead. At worst, a formulation like “Do all students have their books?” and “Everyone, do you have your books?” (where, unlike elsewhere, “[e]veryone” serves to call attention and to address the class in the manner of a vocative) would correct the grammatical problem while still allowing any deliberate effect that the teacher might have sought by using the third person. Ditto, when the first person should be used, because the speaker is included in the group: Why use formulations with “everyone” and “they” when “we” is available, avoids the abuse of “they” and any singular/plural confusion, and reflects the actual situation so much better? (Consider a lost team competition and “We all did our best.” vs. “Everyone did their best.” when spoken by a team member.)

   Generally, many problems can be resolved by a reformulation using “all” or some other plural quantifier (e.g. “some”, “many”)—and the odd over-use of “every” and “everyone” where “all” is more natural is a potentially strong sign of agenda pushing. Consider “All parents worry about their children.” vs. “Every parent worries about their children.” and “Everyone worries about their children.”. (Phrasings involving parents have been absurdly common, but this might be a result of common topics in fiction.)

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   Side-note:

   This is the worse when another singular aspect is pushed, which considerably increases the possibility that the speaker has not just failed to acknowledge the difference between grammatical and “logical” number (“everyone” is singular but is applied to a plural in a manner that makes a mistake in good faith comparatively likely). For instance, if we have one book per student, someone might push “Does everyone have their book?”, which makes clear that “their” is abused as a singular. Even with one book per student, “books” would have been the lesser evil. Likewise, the above examples involving “parent” are, probably, more commonly found using “child”, as with “Every parent worries about their child.”, which makes the formulation doubly unfortunate. (Triply, if we count the risk that some child in a multi-child family will feel excluded and neglected.)

   In a bigger picture, even legitimate combinations of plurals and singulars are tricky, and more explicit formulations are usually better. For instance, “Does everyone have their respective book[s]?”, would be more precise as to whether a collective ownership is present and could be argued to remove the problem present with “Does everyone have their book?”.

   (For an example of problems with ownership and other connections, take the above scenario with FBI agents vs. bank robbers and consider the claim “The FBI agents fired their guns at their enemies.”, where the various agents most likely had their own respective gun or guns, even if ultimately owned by the FBI as an entity, but where the enemies presumably were shared. Even a singular gun could underlie common ownership, as with “The artillerists fired their gun at their enemies.” when a group of artillerists working with a single gun/canon was intended. Here, cf. below, we also see that “the” is often a choice to consider over “their” even when “their” is used correctly.)

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4. Pushing of singular + “they”, when plural + “they” would have worked as well or better, even the abuse of “they” aside. In addition to the “everyone” above, consider “The student must be on their best behavior.” vs. “The students [...]” or “An Olympic athlete hopes to be in the best shape of their life.” vs. “Olympic athletes [...]” or “All Olympic athletes [...]”. (With trivial adaptions to the bracketed parts where needed.)

   A particularly common variation might be poor combinations with words like “average” or other group characteristics. Instead of resorting to ugliness like “The average worker will have less left of their paycheck.” one could simply say “Workers will, on average, have less left of their paychecks.”. Ditto, many combinations with words like “usual”, “typical”, whatnot. Consider modifications of the previous example to use “The typical worker will have [...]” vs. e.g. “Typical workers will have [...]”.

5. Pushing of “one” in an absurd combination with “they” as with “one must do their best” over “one must do one’s best”. (Possibly, because an older convention might have used “he”, as with “one must do his best”, but this would “solve” a “problem” that no longer existed and agenda pushing seems a more likely explanation.)

   Worse, I have repeatedly seen utterly illogical and inexcusable replacements of a second “one” (it self, as an unmodified word) with “they”. (See excursion.) Here, we virtually must have either deliberate agenda pushing or borderline illiteracy.

6. A borderline case is many uses of “their” when “the” would have worked just as well, ducked the entire issue, and, as a bonus, saved two letters. Consider “The visitor found the[ir] way.”, which almost always will be better with the shorter version, even aside from the grammatically nonsensical use of “their”.

   Similar claims can apply to some other words, e.g. “a” and “that” (but are less “in the face” through not being a prefix of “their”), as with “The guest lent me a book.” over “The guest lent me their book.”, where we also see a potential improvement as the latter version implies that the guest only had one book, which could be wrong. (A slight gain from the implication of ownership, in that the guest did not lend someone else’s book can be argued, but is unlikely in this case. If in doubt, the speaker is unlikely to know whether ownership applied and/or is justified in assuming it.)

   Sometimes, the word at hand can be skipped outright without loss, as with “The guest loved [his/their/whatnot] freedom.”, where the difference in meaning between the versions with and without the word is unimportant in many contexts. (More: sometimes entire sequences of words can be skipped, as with “The guest packed [his/their/whatnot bags] before going home.”, where a simple “The guest packed before going home.” will almost always work as well, while being pleasantly shorter.)

7. Since the original writing, I have continually found new examples of various types. Consider the many weird uses of the active over the passive, which open the doors for abuse of “they”. A notable family of cases is exemplified by “food sold at markets” vs. “food that they sell at markets”, which also (often and again) demonstrates how the version with “they” is unnecessarily long and clumsy. Many other cases revolve around words like “allow”, “require”, “forbid”, whatnot, in combination with something non-human, e.g. a school. Many seem to opt for formulations like “School [blah blah]. They allowed me to [...]” in order to avoid repeating “School”. However, the whole issue of pronoun can be dodged by “School [blah blah]. I was allowed to [...]”. (Many other cases and case families exist.)

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   Side-note:

   However, this could be more a matter of the horrifyingly naive take on the passive that many modern writers have, where the religious avoidance of the passive leads to weird formulations that, as a mere side-effect, open the doors for abuse of “they”.

   (Overuse of the passive is bad—not use in general. Nevertheless, the single thing that many poor writers seem to take away from style-guides, teachers, whatnot, is to “never, ever, under any circumstances use the passive”.)

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   Likewise, consider an apparent fear of participles. The above is an arguable simultaneous example of this, using a past participle. For the present participle we have e.g. “markets selling food” vs. “markets where they sell food”. (The participle-phobe also has other options that do not use “they”, e.g. “markets that sell food”.)

   I will not attempt to point out any and all other case or case family that I encounter, as the current list should already make my point sufficiently well.

Potentially off-topic, I also note that some users (especially, on Wikipedia) seem to deliberately use phrases that juxtapose a natural singular with “they” in a flagrant manner, e.g. by speaking of an “individual” and two words later reference that individual with “they”—something so contrary to the nature of an individual that the user might just as well scratch a blackboard. As noted, I try to apply Hanlon’s Razor, but current abuses could make Hanlon’s Razor tantamount to burying one’s head in the sand.

Another interesting-but-potentially-off-topic issue is the use of “they” in a manner that is correct, but where other words (e.g. “those”/“these”) or completely different formulations would have been as good or better. (“[These/They] are not the droids that you are looking for.”) This could be an extended case of agenda pushing, by making “they” the go-to word for almost anything, which could reduce the resistance against abuse as a singular; however, it could also be a lack of imagination in formulation or some other language weakness. Because the immediate issue of abuse-as-a-singular is missing, the chance of weak use in good faith seems greater than for most of the above.

Excursion on when a collective entity is a plural

A very important potential exception is when the name of the entity is strongly “pluralistic”. Overlapping, a case can sometimes be made when the collective is so loose a grouping that it does not have the nature of an entity (but note that this is secondary to more grammatical aspects in the context of correct grammar). Consider “the United States”: Even now the name is clearly a plural and in the very early days, at least and in my impression, the entity was so loose a grouping that the status as an entity was very disputable. To speak of “they” might then be outright preferable—and, indeed, German uses plural cases, forms, and whatnot when discussing the U.S. in a very visible manner (the take in English is less obvious through the fewer grammatical differentiations by number that remain). In contrast, the European Union is a singular: The name is clearly a singular and while the European Union qua federation is (still, knock on wood) more weakly integrated than the modern U.S., it arose as a distinct entity in a more explicit and deliberate manner.

To this, note that it is usually the name in use that matters, and that different names can have different effects. The United States [of America] is a plural because it goes by the corresponding name. Other united states might go by a more singular name, e.g. “Mexico” over “the United Mexican States” and remain singular. Indeed, when the term “America” is abused to imply the U.S., this, too, is best viewed as a singular. (The proper meaning of “America” is what is sometimes referred to by the artificial misnomer of “the Americas”—a misnomer, which presumably arose due to the abuse of “America” in an incompatible meaning.)

Similarly, we have the Beatles (plural) as a potentially legitimate “they” but “Queen” (singular) as an “it”, and so on for bands, sports teams, etc. A family reference of “the Hendersons” will usually be a clear plural and “they”, but “the Henderson family” is usually best viewed as a singular and “it”; ditto, m.m., for a contrast of “the Hendersons” and “the Henderson troupe”. (References to “the Henderson family” will often either deal with the individual members or rapidly jump to a plural context, and a grammatical treatment as a plural is not that problematic. However, it is still better to make an explicit switch with e.g. an intervening “Its members [...]”.) Etc.

Excursion on image texts

A particularly common, and particularly absurd, source of examples are various image texts (notably, the “alt” texts used for HTML; however, other types, including regular legends, are sometimes afflicted), where some absurd standard of gender-neutrality contrary to the purpose of such texts is sought—and sought in an incompetent manner.

In as far as these texts describe the image contents (note, again, “alt” texts), they should be sufficiently detailed that they can give someone without images activated, who is blind and relies on a screen reader, or otherwise draws on such texts, a fair idea of these contents. However, the poor reader might instead encounter idiocies like “person on their computer”. (An actual example that I recently saw on the “Fox News” website—a place that should know better than to cater to Leftist language distortion.)

Looking more in detail at this example:

Firstly, it fails to be sufficiently descriptive. While what exact information to include can be a matter of both taste and circumstance, the above is clearly insufficient. At a minimum, a division by both sex and some rough age group would be needed, e.g. that the “person” actually was an “adult male”, a “female teen”, or a “male child”. This automatically takes care of “their”, which now, by any sane writer, would be replaced with “his” or “her”. Likewise, “computer” is sufficiently wide a term that at least a specification to “desktop“/”laptop” is needed.

Secondly, and contrariwise, if the trivial information given had been enough, this comes close to proof that the entire image was pointless and should not have been included, making the choice to include it an equally pointless opening for a language problem. (And, off topic, a cause of other problems like waste of screen space, waste of bandwidth, and waste of the reader’s time.)

Thirdly, the above assumes that a pronoun is needed at all, while a more natural formulation would use “a computer”. It is both shorter and more likely to match the truth, as the “a” is easy to establish while the “their”/“his”/“her” is very often speculation.

Fourthly, the use of “their” (as so often is the case) introduces a mistake (or, on the outside, ambiguity) in reference, as the most natural interpretation is that the computer belongs to some group of more than one, e.g. the parents of a child, should a child be the user.

Excursion on “one”, “they”, war, and peace

With the observation that sometimes a second “one” was replaced with “they” in an absurd manner, I originally gave an example based on “if one wants peace, one must prepare for war” in a side-note. This example proved sufficiently fruitful that I opted for this, longer, excursion instead.

To begin with that example, consider the inexcusable corruption to “if one wants peace, they [sic!!!] must prepare for war”. (And, analogously, similar corruptions of obvious “one” + “one” sentences. Note that I speak of instances where it is clear that “they” references the same thing as “one” and not, with correct grammar, some group of others.) This moves on such an idiotic level that one might just as well use “they” to reference “I”, “he”, etc. (“I took a shower and then they [sic!!!] shaved.”)

Next consider some ways to do it better:

1. Stick to the original “one” + “one” version.

2. Go with “they” + “they”, without ever introducing “one”. This often both remains grammatical and keeps the intended meaning. For instance, “if they want peace, they must prepare for war” would often work perfectly well, either in the context as it is or after only minor modifications. (Exceptions do exist, including the more proverbial context in which the original phrase usually occurs.)

3. Many cases can be resolved by simply using “we” instead of “one”, as with “if we want peace, we have to prepare for war”. (However, note that whether such a switch works can depend on the exact context.)

   The same applies to “you”, with the benefit that a shortening is often possible by using an implicit second “you”, as with “if you want peace, [you must] prepare for war”.

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   Side-note:

   The use of “you” is often problematic (e.g. because it can involve an unintended accusation, as with “when you are late, then [...]” for “when someone is late, then [...]”). However, “one” + “they” is worse, as it causes a problem on a lower level of language processing and does so with a higher probability. (Even the issue of agenda pushing aside.)

   Also note that the Latin precursor, “si vis pacem, para bellum”, is in the second person singular, which, apart from the singular/plural ambiguity, is what “you” amounts to in English.

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   Ditto “those” and “those who want peace must prepare for war”.

   With a lesser probability of a good match, versions using other pronouns are possible (e.g. “if he [etc.]”).

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   Side-note:

   Something like “if one wants peace, prepare for war” might seem tempting, but it, too, is ungrammatical, because “prepare” has an implicit “you”, not an implicit “one”. It is, however, a lesser error than the “one” + “they” version and it does dodge the issue of “they”. For those about to ignore the rules of grammar anyway, it is, then, the lesser sin.

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4. Often, a minor re-write can dodge the pronoun issue entirely, as with “to gain peace, prepare for war” and “peace requires readiness for war”, both of which are entirely pronoun free. (While some examples in the preceding item dodges the issue by using only one pronoun.)

Excursion on odd Wikipedia-switches, ambiguities, and “meta-ambiguities”

At the beginning of the Wikipedia page on Metic^w (oldid=1265606439), I find an interesting example that (a) shows a very common issue with Wikipedia (introduction of an explicit singular and virtually immediate use of “they”), (b) demonstrates how hard it can be to tell the difference between incompetence and agenda pushing, and (c) shows the unfortunate effects of such switches on understandability:

In ancient Greece, a metic ([etymology removed]) was a resident of Athens and some other cities who was a citizen of another polis. They held a status broadly analogous to modern permanent residency, being permitted indefinite residence without political rights.

Here “a metic”, a distinctly singular something, is introduced in the one sentence and the next sentence switches to plural and “[t]hey”, without warning and for no obvious reason.

Firstly, this introduces an ambiguity and causes a “garden-path sentence”, because the first sentence contains a plural, which makes that plural the likely referent—Athens and some other cities held a status (and so on). That this is not the intent can only be deduced from inconsistencies on a fairly high level of interpretation and requiring considerable background knowledge, including that cities are unlikely to be permitted residence. Effectively, a clash between grammar and the likely intended meaning implies that one of the two is wrong, and the reader must now decide whether he has found an error of grammar or is mistaken concerning the intended meaning.

Worse, even residence for cities is not entirely inconceivable, and there might be contexts where the ambiguity cannot be detected or resolved. (E.g. in a sci-fi or fantasy work, or in some setting where “city” is more closely tied to the population than the buildings or place and the population jointly migrates from point A to point B.) There can certainly be other sentences of a similar shape where such an ambiguity cannot even be detected, even in the real world and even with extensive knowledge. Consider a hypothetical “A dog walker walks dogs. They love to walk.”, where grammar dictates that it is the dogs that love to walk and where there is no indication that the writer actually intended to say that the dog walker (specifically) or dog walkers (in general) would love to walk. (Contrast this with “A dog walker walks dogs. They are often young women.”.)

Secondly, even if we allow “they” as a third-person generic singular, and even discounting the presence of a proper plural, we have an ambiguity: Apart from “metic”, we could have a reference to “ancient Greece”, “Athens”, or “another polis” (with varying likelihood). At an extreme, even “resident” and “citizen” could be referenced.

Thirdly, this introduces a “meta-ambiguity”, namely, whether the choice was deliberate or a sign of incompetence and an inability to keep track of numbers. In the former case, we have an additional “meta-ambiguity” as to whether the deliberate choice was made in the mere misguided belief that “they” is an acceptable third-person generic singular or whether it reflects agenda pushing.

Fourthly, this is entirely unnecessary: A trivial change to speak of “[m]etics held” over “[t]hey held” would resolve the issue of number and choice of pronoun—and would be far better with an eye at the above ambiguities. (While allowing a natural transition to a discussion in the plural. Staying in the singular with “[a] metic held” is, of course, possible.) Likewise, the first sentence could simply have spoken of “metics” and at least removed the number/pronoun issue (but with a lesser effect on the ambiguities).

Fifthly, if a random-seeming switch from singular to plural actually was wanted (as opposed to one involving agenda pushing and/or “they” as a third-person generic singular), “[t]hese” seems a more natural choice than “[t]hey” to me. If in doubt, the use of the former would have signalled that a switch to plural was the actual intention and removed the “meta-ambiguities”.

Excursion on anonymization and lack of precision

A somewhat recurring joke in e.g. comic strips is that a “They say that [whatnot]” by one speaker is followed by “Who are ‘they’?” by another. While this not-very-funny joke makes a point that could be valuable for a child to observe, a more generalized version is relevant for many adults in the context of abuse of “they”:

Many seem to grab a “they” in order to not have to bother themselves with finding out who, telling others who, or similar, which leads to a reduction in both precision of thought and clarity of communication. (But is less likely to be deliberate and/or malicious than many of the other abuses discussed on this page.)

For instance, what triggered this excursion was a mention that someone had talked to the governor who had said that they were looking to prosecute. (Likely, in one of the many texts relating to the murder of Charlie Kirk. The details, including what governor and why, however, are beside the point.)

Firstly, we have the possibility that “they” referred to an individual, notably, the governor, be it because the writer was a wokester who disregarded biological sex or because the governor was one and insisted on “they”. Another possibility is that, cf. below, the governor had spoken of a DA, or some other third person, and the DA was now referred to as “they” instead of “he” or “she”. (So far, we are in old territory.)

Secondly, and more interestingly, chances are that the reference was to some group, collective, collective entity, whatnot, e.g. a DA’s office or the state government in a general and abstract sense—or that the governor spoke (implicitly or explicitly) of e.g. “I and the DA”, who were then anonymized as “they”. However, it can really make a difference who is looking to prosecute, making the cartoon question “Who are ‘they’?” highly relevant. Indeed, a more specific claim is often relevant even when “they” does have a somewhat clear referent. (Note some above remarks about the FBI, where even “the FBI” might be too vague in many or most contexts, and “they” would make matters that much worse.)

To boot, there would often be a possibility that “they” referred to the governor together with the original “someone” (and/or a group containing the two of them), introducing yet another interpretation. (By memory, however, this interpretation was not plausible in the case at hand.)

To boot, there is some unclarity as to where the “they” originated. It might e.g. have been that the governor said “they are looking to prosecute” but equally that the governor said “We are [...]” or “The DA’s office is [...]”, with a switch to “they” by the “someone”.

Correspondingly, this type of “they” is best avoided in favor of an explicit identification, e.g. “the governor”, “the DA”, “the DA’s office”. (And preferably with the use of correct pronouns, where applicable, in that, yes, “the governor and the DA” match “they”, but each individually is a “he” or a “she”, while the “DA’s office” usually requires an “it’.)