alt Hacker News“They” is a very, very widely accepted gender-neutral fallback pronoun, acceptably used even in cases where the subject may not “identify as a they/them” or whatever phraseology has got you perturbed. Software developers should be especially aware of this as this makes writing user-facing content much easier. Any disagreement with this is almost certainly some sort of culture war issue, at best wrapped with a thin guide of “caring about proper English”. But thanks anyway.
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Also it's been used for centuries by writers who are considered at the top of the craft. It's not a neologism. It dates back to the 14th century. Authors who use "they" as a gender neutral singular pronoun include: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen, Dickens, etc.
In fact, it was 18th century schoolteachers who invented the "rule" that it wasn't acceptable usage.
These same losers also invented the "rules" that you can't end a sentence with a preposition, you can't split an infinitive, and you can't start a sentence with a conjunction.
These are all fake rules that were just poorly obfuscated attempts to make English follow Latin grammar (bc Latin was allegedly a "perfect" language)
My favorite fun fact about this is that a Stack Exchange community moderator was removed for referring to others as “they/them”