The following quiz question is posed in the October issue of
AskOxford, a service of Oxford University Press:

"Which writer, in an interview this month at the Cheltenham Festival
of Literature, said that they [sic] consulted a dictionary 'about 20
times a day' and made frequent use of a thesaurus?"

While I realize that "they" refers back to the singular "writer," is
this not incorrect pursuant to current prescriptive English usage? I
say prescriptive, because notwithstanding the fact that this number
agreement gaffe is now rife in command parlance, I would bet that it
not yet gained approval by authors of English language textbooks. Can
any school teachers among you confirm this?

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 26 Oct 2006 13:12 PDT

Hi nautico...

I suspect this comes down to the matter of practicality vs correctness.
I, too, cringe at this usage, but, at times find that it is necessary,
primarily for the purpose of either hiding the gender of the person
referred to, or because the gender is unknown.

In the example you cited, it's clear that using the 'correct' pronoun
would considerably narrow the field of writers, and defeat the purpose
of hiding the identity of the writer in the question.

There is probably a way to reconstruct the sentence so that the 
offending 'they' is eliminated, but the simple fact is that few
writers want to take the time to do so, and are much more likely
to write in such a way that the sentence arrives at the point
where 'he' or 'she' would be appropriate only for the writer to
realize that they either don't know the gender or that they don't
want to give it away. That's how it happens to me, anyway.

Let me know if this satisfies your interests...

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 26 Oct 2006 18:01 PDT

OK, OK, I agree with all of you, but what I want to know is whether
today's high school English grammar text books accept "they" as both
singular and plural (in the same sense that "you" enjoys both number).

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 26 Oct 2006 19:06 PDT

William Safire has written that "when enough of us are wrong, we're
right." I don't find fault with such logic, but at some point surely
well reputed grammarians will capitulate to common parlance and amend
textbooks to reflect the usage, to wit:

                 Singular           Plural
1st person       I                  We
2nd person       You                You
3rd person       He/she/it/they     They

Has this happened yet?

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 26 Oct 2006 19:23 PDT

Some examples of correct (and clear) number agreement:

Everyone on the men's basketball team should draw his new uniform by tomorrow.

Everyone on the women's basketball team should draw her new uniform by tomorrow.

Everyone on the basketball team should draw his or her new uniform by
tomorrow. (But here's where the prescriptive rule descends to
absurdity, since no mixed basketball teams exist!) :)

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 26 Oct 2006 19:31 PDT

Pink, that Wikipedia article is about as exhaustive a response as I'm
going to get, although I noticed it didn't mention whether high school
grammar textbooks now explicitly accept a singular "they." That said,
Fowler does, and that's good enough for me.

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 26 Oct 2006 19:45 PDT

"Australia is one of the few places in the English-speaking world to
officially sanction its use in publishing and academic contexts. In
particular, the Australian Government officially encourages its use in
publications as a gender-neutral alternative to 'he or she'."

Ahhhhh, "officially sanction." That's what I was looking for, but I
gather that American English grammar texts (those used in secondary
schools) have yet to reach this point.

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 27 Oct 2006 03:50 PDT

Denco,

"To the question, nautico-ga, if a survey of American English grammar
textbooks was taken, the use of the 'singular they' is unacceptable."

But why? If a singular "their" is now so patently acceptable, why have
American teachers of English not capitulated? I think I know the
answer: They are intent on staying the course. :)

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 28 Oct 2006 11:34 PDT

I continue to await an answer that would clarify whether today's high
school English textbooks permit a singular treatment of "they" and
"their." If I don't receive such a response within the next week, I'll
cancel this question.

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 30 Oct 2006 10:40 PST

I found the answer to my question on the following site:

http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions/category/lang/107647.htm,
specifically this statement about one-third of the way down the page:

"(4.) Use of the singular they/their form. This construction is
becoming increasingly acceptable. However, classroom teachers need to
be aware that state and/or national assessments may not regard this
construction as correct."

I must say, though, that the qualifying "however" caveat continues to
muddy the issue. Why, if this practice is now predominant in common
parlance, is it not officially sanctioned by American English teachers
and the authors of state and national assessments?

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Request for Question Clarification by denco-ga on 31 Oct 2006 14:05 PST

Howdy nautico-ga,

"However, classroom teachers need to be aware that state and/or national
assessments may not regard this construction as correct."

I believe the above clears the waters, rather than muddy them.

State and/or national assessments are written by people that include those
that have little or no common sense.

These are the same people that tried to legislate the value of pi to be 3.2,
have tried to add creationism to science curriculum, and prohibited sex
education in some schools.

The Straight Dope - "Did a state legislature once pass a law saying pi equals 3?"
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html

Ohio Citizens for Science - "IS IT SCIENCE YET?"
http://www.ohioscience.org/legal-gey.shtml

Boston Globe - "Teens should abstain from sex, not sex ed"
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2005/09/12/teens_should_abstain_from_sex_not_sex_ed/

As well, one must conclude that even if the decision was solely up to the
American teachers of English, there is the same "controversy" that seems to
infect any discussion of this topic, even here.

I think the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the source of
your "answer," was trying to shuck off their responsibility to resolve this
issue, by foisting it on "state and/or national assessments."  Red herring,
indeed!

One would think the primary advisers to the assessment process would be a
group such as the NCTE!  Perhaps they are having problems with the academics
within their community that refuse to accept such a common sense notion.

Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 31 Oct 2006 20:05 PST

Denco, sure, what the heck, make that your answer.

I'm not a school teacher (unless Sunday school counts), but I cringe
when I see "they" used in such a manner. This kind of thing is
marginally OK in colloquial speech, but in written English it grates
on my sensibilities somethin' awful.

Here's an interesting article about the singular 'they':

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002742.html

The quiz question could have remained gender-neutral without the
jarring use of "they" as a singular pronoun. Here's one way:

"Which writer, in an interview this month at the Cheltenham Festival
of Literature, claimed to have consulted a dictionary 'about 20 times
a day' and made frequent use of a thesaurus?"

Let me redo that...

"Which writer, in an interview this month at the Cheltenham Festival
of Literature, claimed to have consulted a dictionary 'about 20 times
a day' and to have made frequent use of a thesaurus?"

I think singular "they" with an unknown sex is accepted syntax at this point.  
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

English is full of all kinds of peculiar irrregulariities.  I don't
see why argue over one more.

If Shakespeare used it, it works for me.

"they (singular)"
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980501

"You probably can't [convince someone that using "they" in the singular is
acceptable], because people who form strong opinions on such issues will rarely
be convinced by evidence, no matter how extensive or persuasive.
...
Objections to singular they began with the grammarians of the late eighteenth
century, by which point it had been in frequent use for four hundred years. The
form is extremely common today, especially in informal use, and especially as a
sex-neutral pronoun, for which we have a real need in English."

"The singular "they"/"their"/"them"/"themselves" construction"
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

"While your high-school English teacher may have told you not to use this
construction, it [using they/their/them/themseleves] actually dates back to at
least the 14th century, and was used by the following authors (among others) in
addition to Jane Austen: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare,
the King James Bible, The Spectator, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances
Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley,
Lord Byron, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott, George Eliot [Mary
Anne Evans], Charles Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin,
Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar
Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, W. H.
Auden, Lord Dunsany, George Orwell, and C. S. Lewis."

If the above is the company I must keep with my use of "they," then so be it.

I usually have an English major's tendency to get upset about this
sort of thing, but the singular "they," as some others have pointed
out, is coming into more common usage and as Denco in particular
pointed out, has been used by some fine writers.  As long as one has
fine writing and great grammar, why quibble about the small stuff?

Pinkfreud did a good job rewriting the sentence to preclude the use of
"they," but in the rewritten sentence sounds incomplete and as if it
should be followed with an explanation, such as "... made frequent use
of a thesaurus when writing his/her latest novel" or "... made
frequent use of a thesaurus when coming up with new ideas."  This
might be due to the separation of the subject and verb, and that's why
the writer of the piece might have chosen to avoid this phrasing.

I agree with keystroke. Pinkfreud's sentence, while nicely
circumventin "they" just seems not complete. I got to the end and my
mind went " and...???"

They is OK to use because that is the great thing about English, the
fact that it is so adaptable and flexible. Personally I abhor bad
grammar but it just seems appropriate in this case.

This may be of interest:

http://tinyurl.com/ybj55n

Some of the references at the bottom of this Wikipedia article may be
useful or confusing (or both):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Let us examine the options we have at hand.

- The teacher went to his car.

The above is now generally accepted to be sexist, and not guaranteed to be
accurate in that the teacher might very well be a woman.  The days of the
gender neutral "he" are long gone.

- The teacher went to his or her car.

Yikes!  Too formal, and clumsy, even for "formal" writing, no matter how
"correct" it might be considered.  I think most would agree this is an
artificial construct because of the failure to find a gender neutral
term to use in these situations.

- The teacher went to their car.

Accepted, used and understood for over 400 years, by all except for the
"English" teachers of the United States.  Far more "egregious" changes
have been adopted within the English language in much less time.

To the question, nautico-ga, if a survey of American English grammar
textbooks was taken, the use of the "singular they" is unacceptable.

I was taught English within one of the more stricter environments that
one could imagine, but I got over it.

That should have been "one of the more strict environments" instead.

I wrote one of my old (he's now in his mid-80s) English profs
(Carleton College) about this matter. His response:

It's always a pleasure to hear from you, but I'm no practical help to
you on matters of contemporary usage of English. I agree with Bill
Safire on they their his or her, and though I don't keep up with what
English teachers are doing--don't much care--my impression is that, if
they are under sixty and not pursuing some precious ideological change
(like Ms., s/he, she=god), they also agree with Safire, not ever
having heard of the conventional declension.
  
Declensions and congugations, etc. have all given way to mere usage,
haven't they? Like modern street Italian or Transtevere (ian?) Roman
dialect.  But I don't really know what I'm talking about, do I?  I
never cared or knew much about grammar except as a social convention.
It used to be embarrassing to make obvious gaffers (Between he and I)
in public. Not any more.  But Dizzy Dean's mangling of the language
when he was broadcasting baseball games  was robust and had the sound
at leasts of folk speech, Bert Blyleven's total ignorance of the
accusative case (as he does the color for  the Twin's games) just
sounds stupid and ignorant.  But then he is Dutch and has a lot to
overcome.

    I've got to go to a late lunch downtown. All of the above is 
weary-of-the-subject gibberish. Please don't worry about it.

[Funny.] :)