“Tell each student to turn in their homework.”

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The lack of a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun is a problem that has existed since Middle English: “And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up…Chaucer, ‘The Pardoner’s Prologue’ ca. 1395 (in Jespersen)” (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, p. 901).

The use of the traditional pronoun he, his, him, goes back to the 18th century grammarians who boxed themselves into the position by first deciding that the indefinite pronouns must always be singular. They then had to decide between the masculine and feminine singular pronouns for use in reference to the indefinites, and they chose the masculine (they were, of course, all men) (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, p. 902).

Great writers from the past used they as a singular pronoun.

[It was] a normal pattern in English that was established four centuries before the 18^th- century grammarians invented the solecism. The plural pronoun is one solution devised by native speakers of English to a grammatical problem inherent in that language––and it is by no means the worst solution (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, p. 902).

The following examples date as far back as the 14th century.

“The righteous man … that taketh not their life in vain––Pearl, ca. 1380 (spelling modernized)

There’s not a man I meet…As if I were their well-acquainted friend––Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, 1593” (Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994, p. 902).

This linguistic problem could be considered one of “ad fontes” where linguists are going back to the sources to prove that the lack of a gender-neutral singular pronoun is not an issue brought to light only because of the feminist movement of the ‘70s.

The problems surrounding the invention of the printing press are analogous to our present-day problem with using they, their, and them as singular pronouns. The English-speaking world doesn’t seem to have a problem with using they when it speaks, but as soon as it goes to print, it goes “prescriptivist” and starts spouting off what the grammarians insisted on in the 18th century.

According to linguist John McWhorter(1998), “The only thing keeping us from taking advantage of it [singular they] has been the power of the prescriptivist hoax, starting with Lowth and Murray’s inevitable whacks at it back in the 1700s” (p. 124).