"They" for the single person gender neutral is the RIGHT ANSWER, damnit. It has grown naturally out of common English usage, and it's usually distinct enough to tell what you mean because it's conjugated as the singular. Yes, you will have to live with abominations like "themself", but it's worth it to integrate a useful new pronoun.
Ah, yes, the great battle of standardization versus grammatical evolution. It isn't acceptable in formal writing yet, because formal writing is designed to maximize specificity and precision, very much at the expense of the rhythms and elisions that are natural when speaking aloud. Personally, I'm of the opinion that it will /become/ acceptable some time in the next couple decades, but the day is not yet.
Personally, I'm also waiting for the day we just throw out any and all apostrophes associated with "its" and let context take care of it, but I haven't gotten that particular Christmas wish yet either.
Yeah, until the rules change, you have to be able to see novel use of they so you can remove it from formal writing (if you have to: if you're eminent enough, I recommend exploiting it).
Getting rid of the apostrophe sounds like a great idea! That peeve is being added to my petting zoo.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 04:58 am (UTC)Personally, I'm also waiting for the day we just throw out any and all apostrophes associated with "its" and let context take care of it, but I haven't gotten that particular Christmas wish yet either.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-08 05:03 am (UTC)Getting rid of the apostrophe sounds like a great idea! That peeve is being added to my petting zoo.