Culture | Johnson

English has a traditional solution to gender-neutral pronouns

In praise of singular “they”.

COPY editors are opinionated. Whether titles of books should be in italics or in inverted commas can divide them more decidedly than the Sharks and the Jets. So at a recent meeting of the American Copy Editors Society, the “Chicago Manual of Style” and the Associated Press (AP) stylebook, both widely followed, announced a change that sent waves through the audience. In AP’s wording, “They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy.”

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Everybody has their opinion”

The negotiator

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