The Singular Pronoun We Already Use
Someone left their umbrella behind. I hope they come back for it.
Is there anything odd about that sentence? I’m guessing most of us would read it without a second thought. There’s one umbrella owner, and we’ve referred to that person as they. Perfectly ordinary English.
Yet every so often, I come across someone insisting that they can only be plural. And if it refers to more than one person, how can we use it for just one? Well, we already do – and we’ve been doing it for centuries! In fact, we use it more than we realise.
If a customer has a problem, they should speak to a member of staff.
We’re referencing one hypothetical customer, but we don’t need to know their gender to explain what they should do. Writing he or she would convey the same information, though it would make the sentence a little more cumbersome.
Singular they is useful when someone’s gender is unknown, irrelevant or deliberately left unspecified.
A bit of history
Singular they goes back a long way. Linguist Dennis Baron, writing about the Oxford English Dictionary’s evidence, traces it back to the fourteenth century. (His excellent post on the subject can be found here.) And if you’d prefer an example without having to decipher Middle English (and let’s face it, who wants to do that?), here’s Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:
‘…nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.’
Nobody is grammatically singular, but Austen follows it with they. It’s a construction that still sounds natural today.
That doesn’t mean every use of singular they has the same history. Its growing visibility as a personal pronoun, particularly for non-binary people, is a more recent development. But the ability to use they with a singular reference was already there.
They is? They are?
Perhaps this is where some of the confusion comes from. If they refers to one person, should we say they is?
In standard English, we still say They are coming later.
The person may be singular, but the pronoun keeps its usual verb form.
We do something similar with you. Whether I’m asking one author or a roomful of writers, the question is the same:
What are you writing?
I wouldn’t say What is you writing? because there’s only one person in front of me. We’re quite comfortable letting you refer to one person or several without changing the verb, and singular they follows a familiar pattern.
A useful tool in mystery writing
There’s a use of singular they that I come across fairly regularly when editing crime and mystery novels: keeping a character’s gender hidden from the reader.
Someone had been watching the house. They had been there for hours.
Is the watcher a man or a woman? At this point, we don’t know. Using he or she might narrow the suspects before the writer wants us to start ruling anyone out.
Of course, this needs to be handled carefully. If characters who know the culprit keep finding elaborate ways to avoid mentioning their gender, readers may begin to notice the trick. The same applies if a viewpoint character seems to be withholding information simply to preserve the surprise.
But where the wording fits the scene and perspective, singular they lets the writer hold something back without making every sentence an obstacle course.
Referring to someone who uses they/them
We can also use they for a particular person whose pronouns are they/them:
Alex said they’ll send the document tomorrow.
Here, we know who Alex is. We’re using the pronouns Alex uses, rather than leaving their identity unspecified.
That may feel less familiar to some readers than the umbrella example, but unfamiliarity doesn’t, by itself, make a construction grammatically incorrect. The sentence still follows the usual pattern: they’ll send, they are, they have.
As an editor, I’d check that it’s clear who the pronoun refers to, just as I would with he, she or plural they. If Alex and several other people appear in the same sentence, repeating a name might help the reader follow what’s happening.
So, can ‘they’ be singular?
Yes. Whether we’re talking about a misplaced umbrella, an unidentified suspect or someone who uses they/them pronouns, they can refer to one person. When editing, the useful question for me is whether the wording is clear and suits the context. Singular they will often do that job perfectly well.
Have you ever been told you shouldn’t use singular they? Or have you used it in fiction to keep a character’s identity under wraps? Let me know in the comments!
