It would be simply decent of you to simply admit that the article you sent me to has next to nothing to say about usage of the “singular they” by well known writers in the years 1600-1900, which was what I was asking about.

The Canterbury Tales were written in Middle English — which has a reduced form of “singular they” derived from Anglo-Saxon — in the 1300s. What does this have to do with what was written by writers in Modern English, which has no such form, several hundred years later? (For what it’s worth here, Balhorn finds the use of “he/him/his” happens 82% of the time in Chaucer, while the Middle English “hem/hir(e)” appears 12% of the time, and an actual “they” appears 6% of the time, or in four instances).

The passage you quote concerning a “quantitative analysis of written English” has nothing to do with such writers, which is why I didn’t mention it. I’m not sure what such a blunt, mechanical analysis, without more, proves, in any event. Mr. Balhorn simply searched the OED for instances where “every one” precedes “they/them/their” by 10 words or less, and then compared them to instances where “every one” precedes “he/him/his” by the same. The work of no writer, well known or obscure, was analyzed. The search has no requirement that the words be in the same sentence, or even by the same speaker. So, a passage such as: “The Joneses thanked everyone and left. Later, as they walked home…” would show up as an instance of the use of the “singular they.” Even a passage saying, “No instance of Milton following the antecedent ‘every one’ with the pronoun ‘they’ can be found” would show up as an instance of the use of the “singular they.” This is evidence, of what? (Balhorn finds that “they” follows “every one” by 10 words anywhere from 9% to 38% of the time).

If the case for the acceptance and regular use of the “singular they” by well known authors is so solid, while all this dancing around? There must be some actual scholarship concerning well known authors, right? Why not just name names, and provide chapter and verse, as EV did with Austen?

I think I have asked, and you have failed to answer, often enough that we should call it a day. To each his own; or as you, perhaps Jane Austen, but not likely any other famous writer for 400 years, would say, “to each their own.”

there is no such evidence.

. . .that you will accept. It’s interesting that you don’t really quote from Balhorn “in its entirety” (your emphasis). Restore the words immediately preceding and following the quote, the passage reads:

Moreover the appearance of this pattern in published texts is not limited to the late twentieth century; generic they is also found in previous centuries of modern English. Leonard (1929) looked at the great writers since the eighteenth century and provides examples from Austen, Scott, Addison, and Swift, while Poutsma (1914) finds examples in the nineteenth-century writing of Eliot and Trollop and the Early Modern English of Shakespeare:
[]And everyone to rest themselves betake. —Shakespeare (Poutsma 1914, 312).”
Paralleling the primarily anecdotal evidence above, it appears that quantitative analysis of written English also shows a high incidence of ‘they’ with grammatically singular, generic antecedents. (my emphasis)

This passage occurs in the middle of a 3-page discussion of epicene ‘they’ in Modern English. Maybe you were reading quickly? It’s a shame to pay $25 for an article and then miss so much of it.

Perhaps you needed to read that quickly because you apparently also read Sterling Leonard’s 1929 book The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700-1800, cited in the passage you quote, in order to comment intelligently on its scholarly merits. Your dismissive remarks about Leonard’s “paltry citations” don’t match my memory of it, but then I admit I have not read it recently.

But why not mention the six pages Balhorn devotes to the Canterbury Tales? Most people consider Chaucer to be one of our “leading writers.”

(For those playing at home, Balhorn found three factors that affect use of epicene ‘they’ in the CT: distance from the antecedent, antecedent sex, and notionally plural predication. re: distance: Possessive and reflexive pronouns were highly likely to appear within the antecedent clause domain, and these were, as predicted, highly likely to agree with their antecedent. Subject and object pronominal forms corefer only when outside the antecedent clause domain; when they did, these were, as predicted, more likely to use the epicene/plural form. Example: “Ye knowen wel that euery lusty knight, / that loueth paramours and hath his might / (Were it in Engelond or elliswhere / They wold hir thankes wilnen to be there.” ['hir' is a ME form of 'their']) re: pragmatics: When an antecedent is semantically male, male pronouns are used. But when semantics suggest plurality, plural pronouns are often used. Example: “Made euery wight to been in swich plesaunce / That al Monday iusten they and daunce.” ["every wight" = ME for "everyone" or "everybody"] )

But I have ridden my hobby horse too far. I’m not the one making the extraordinary claim that a perfectly normal English usage has always been considered aberrant, even before the “rule” was first formulated in the 18c–you are. Logically, you’re the one who should be supporting your claim, but the VC, for all its wonderful qualities, isn’t a good medium for a detailed examination of linguistic practice through the ages. So I’ll trust that anyone interested in scholarship about English knows where to find it, and leave things here.

Well, Martha, I thought I had made that clear. I have asked, several times:

“ If you could please provide some evidence, from your study, or from what the researchers you continually mention have discovered, beyond the fragmentary stuff already discussed here, for the proposition that the “singular they” was regarded as standard usage, or was regularly used, by any well known writers — Austen already noted — in the 400 years before 1900? The odd, single instance by someone who wrote thousands of pages doesn’t really count.”

This thread is, after all, about EV’s contention that the “singular they” was “sanctioned by leading writers.”

You say that your “first comment summarized a source that cited many more writers than Austen, but you aren’t going to be persuaded by mere example.”

That is correct. I am not – who could be — persuaded by a source that cites the one or two stray instances that can be found in the entire body of a writer’s lifetime work, which is all that the first source you cited, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, does to support its broad assertion that “reference to everyone (or everybody) by they, their, them is . . . sanctioned by good writing . . . in important literature . . . from the 16th century to the present.”

I explained in some detail, above, that:

The same few potted citations are continually given; these are more or less the same examples that were rooted out by Jespersen in 1894, with a few others, and have been handed down ever since.
What do they amount to? One instance in the King James Bible. Two in Shakespeare — and I see that one of these: “And every one to rest themselves betakes,” from the poem Lucrece was actually published in the original 1594 edition, and a second edition, as “And every one to rest himselve betakes,” being changed — by author? by printer? – to “themselves” only in a third edition in 1600. Two (or one and a half) instances? Pretty thin gruel, out of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and two long narrative poems.
The rest of the evidence, Austen excepted, is of a similar sort: the odd citation here and there — one from Thackeray, one from Richardson, etc., — and a fairly long list of 50 or so can be constructed, of one example or so per decade, by reaching down to the likes of Sir Kenhelm Digby and Walter Bagehot for their solitary contributions. And this proves that the “singular they” has always been accepted as an alternate and perfectly good construction?

So now, Martha, you have provided citation to an article that you say provides the evidence I have been waiting for. You say the author of that article, Balhorn, “summarizes studies of present-day English, 18th century English, 19th century English, and OED quotations, all of which find a high incidence of “they” with grammatically singular, generic antecedents.”

So, it was with some interest that I paid $25 for the privilege of reading the Balhorn article, and seeing the summaries of the studies you mention. Here, in its entirety, is what Balhorn says about them:

“[G]generic they is also found in previous centuries of modern English. Leonard (1929) looked at the great writers since the eighteenth century and provides examples from Austen, Scott, Addison, and Swift, while Poutsma (1914) finds examples in the nineteenth-century writing of Eliot and Trollop and the Early Modern English of Shakespeare:
[]And everyone to rest themselves betake. —Shakespeare (Poutsma 1914, 312).”

That’s it. The same paltry, recycled citations from the usual suspects – one Eliot, check, one Swift, check, our old friend Thackeray (“Nobody prevents you, do they?”), check. So little on the subject exists in these “studies” that Balhorn is reduced to giving a prominent place, in quotes, to the same Shakespeare quote from Lucrece that I have previously noted, without bothering to mention that “themselves” was originally written as “himselve,” so that it barely counts as a real instance at all.

To be fair to the late Mr. Poutsma, he didn’t purport to be doing a “study” of the use of the “singular they” (which he says sometimes results in “harsh discrepancies”) by well known writers. He was writing a general book on English grammar “for the use of continental, especially Dutch, schoolchildren,” and understandably devotes only a few inconclusive sentences and citations to this issue.
I have to say I am disappointed, if not exactly shocked, but I thought when I plunked my $25 down that it would buy more than 50 words by Balhorn which add nothing new at all to the inquiry.

So, my question remains: just where is all the evidence that the “Spurious Rule” has actually been regarded as spurious by our best writers in centuries past, and that they embraced, or regularly employed, the “singular they” usage? On the strength of what has been offered here, Martha, the answer appears to be: there is no such evidence.

The two counter-examples I quoted were labelled “For modern-up dating”[sic, should have been "For modern up-dating]. I do not know what phrase the Navy nowadays uses to refer to its employees, both sailors and marines, but it might well have changed since revolutionary times. As for citizens, I don’t know of anyone nowadays who objects to being called a citizen.

The “every enemy will meet their match today” sounds to me as vivid and personal as your other example, and of course it has the merit of including any female enemies. It might conjure up to you an image of “one great reckoning” but your counter-example conjures up to me the evil Baroness escaping unscathed while her male minions are wiped out.

As for your recommended approach of “The hero will take his ammunition”, this is false if the hero happens to be female. Would you say “Mrs Smith took his ammunition…” meaning to refer to Mrs Smith taking her own ammunition? I’ve never heard this phrasing. (Of course these words are always slightly ambiguous: “Mr Smith took his ammunition…” could refer to Mr Smith taking Mr Black’s ammunition).

But the idea doesn’t appear to be reflected in actual written usage: the “Spurious Rule” was the mainstream usage, even when “every one” was used, rather than “every man”; the “singular they” looks to be a barely peripheral usage, unused by most authors.

I find this claim unconvincing given the long lists of the word “they” or “them” being used as a third person singular. You are free to dismiss all the counter-examples of course, but your grounds for doing so strike me as shaky. You have not proved your case that there was a rule against using the word “them” after “every”.

Eudora Welty I note was writing in the 20th century, and quite possibly believed like you that there was a rule forbidding the use of “them” or “their” after “every”.

I agree that there are some usage problems with the Spurious Rule, and instances where it just cannot sensibly be used – there is a hole in the language – but the examples you discuss are not where the usage problems lie.

Au contrarie, the usage problem does appear when dealing with gender. And I am really amazed that you think that it’s okay to say “The hero will take his ammunition..” when the hero might well be known to be female. (In this case the ideal answer to my ears would be to code so the right gender was used depending on how the character was set).

[Thank you for the kind words.]

Anything that cogent must be a feminist trick.

And you respond with the . . . diatribe above, about my lack of training, and all the ignorance perpetrated by sub-undergrad “people like me.” Well, that’s all very interesting. Thing is, I had something in mind more like evidence, rather than name calling. So I take it this means that you don’t have such evidence. Never mind, stick to what you do best. Perhaps someone else will provide it.

David McCourt, what type of evidence are you actually willing to consider? My first comment summarized a source that cited many more writers than Austen, but you aren’t going to be persuaded by mere example. Then I mentioned other sources, but first you were offended at my condescension, then you accused me of being “in thrall” to those who actually study grammar. You’ve scoffed at someone else’s list of scholarly sources because it had feminist articles in it. It’s hard to know what else to tell you.

But as I said, distinguishing between fact/opinion about English is my hobby horse, so one last try–I apologize for its length. Here’s an example of the kind of research that’s out there (and this is just something I happen to have handy on a Saturday night–if you’re interested, the Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts dbase is a good place to find more):

Mark Balhorn. “The Rise of Epicine ‘They’” Journal of English Linguistics, Vol. 32 / No. 2, June 2004 79-104.

I just looked over the article again. Balhorn summarizes studies of present-day English, 18th century English, 19th century English, and OED quotations, all of which find a high incidence of “they” with grammatically singular, generic antecedents. Next, he constructs a theory to answer the question “How could a construction that violates a grammatical pattern so resilient and otherwise inviolable throughout the language, number agreement, become common and perhaps even indispensable?” His theory (based on general theories of agreement by previous linguists) is that the notional number and unspecified gender of the antecedent, as well as the distance between the antecedent and pronoun, affects when people use “they” pronouns with grammatically singular antecedents. (I’ve just typed, then deleted, a longer explanation because it was too much for a blog comment, but Balhorn spells this out in some detail, with examples from present-day English, and explains how this theory predicts that epicene ‘they’ would arise after English lost grammatical gender. (NB: Old English used to have grammatical gender–e.g., the word “wīfmann” (woman) was used with masculine adjectives and pronouns; Modern English uses natural gender except for a few remnants like ship/she.))

Finally, Balhorn addresses the question “Just when did this construction enter the language and can we trace its development?” He reviews studies of Old English and Early Middle English that traced the loss of grammatical gender and the rise of natural gender in the language. Then he analyzes in more detail the OED, the Canterbury Tales, and another Middle English text (13th c), the Ancrene Wisse. Epicene ‘they’ was more frequent in the OED quotations and the Chaucer text than in the AW. However, the AW author still used grammatical gender, and the author was clearly aware of the semantic tension present with the masculine singular 3rd person (shown by the author’s sometimes matching male antecedents with female pronouns)–consistent with Balhorn’s theory.

Balhorn concludes that generic “they” prevails due to internal language changes, not external social changes, but he also states that social pressures affect the language as a whole and may therefore indirectly affect “they.” For example, corpus studies have shown that women were much less often the subject of discourse than men, so using a generic “he” wouldn’t have posed the same dilemma to Middle English writers as it does to Modern English writers. Still (pending “a more thorough and systematic search of generic antecedents and pronouns in Early Middle English”) it appears that the origins of this usage lie in the 14th century.

Historical text analysis isn’t my area of expertise, which is one reason I kept referring you to other sources. Any mistakes in the above are due to my hasty reread/typing. But Balhorn’s is the kind of research that I find convincing, particularly given the overall history of prescriptivism in English.

“The US Navy took the lead in this research. They saw an opportunity…”

This is common in educated speech, but it is against the rules of style. It is contrary to parallelism, but in accord with the reality that organizations are not real persons. What should we do?

It’s each of them, not each of you, that get’s us back into the hot water we’ve been swimming in:

Each of them must do his…

Each of them must do their…

As for sexual politics, that’s another matter.

Not convinced of this, myself.

“England expects that every sailor will do their duty.” Apart from leaving out the Marines – that’s a Royal Marine officer lying next to Nelson on the deck of HMS Victory – I think this is far less direct and personal. (Nelson would never use the French Revolutionary term “citizens” while preparing to fight the French Navy). Nelson is trying to impress on each individual that the individual has a duty that cannot be shirked or left to others.

What’s wrong with “England expects each of you to do your duty”? Or “England expects each of you sailors to do your duty” if you want to leave out the Marines?

Yes, Martha, and I asked you if you could please provide some evidence, from your study, or from what the researchers you continually mention have discovered, beyond the fragmentary stuff already discussed here, for the proposition that the “singular they” was regarded as standard usage, or was regularly used, by any well known writers — Austen already noted — in the 400 years before 1900? The odd, single instance by someone who wrote thousands of pages doesn’t really count.

And you respond with the . . . diatribe above, about my lack of training, and all the ignorance perpetrated by sub-undergrad “people like me.” Well, that’s all very interesting. Thing is, I had something in mind more like evidence, rather than name calling. So I take it this means that you don’t have such evidence. Never mind, stick to what you do best. Perhaps someone else will provide it.

Quoting Galileo at others doesn’t get you very far, when you appear to be in thrall to a priesthood of researchers whose assertions must be accepted unquestioningly, but whose evidence cannot be recited or examined.

Martha, apart from linking to reference books, could you please make a substantive comment?

You mean without hurting your feelings again? Probably not.

You believe everyone should conform to your preferences, based, apparently, on the fact that you have strong feelings about them. Your feelings are shared by Fowler (who had the good sense not to insist that his opinions = linguistic fact, not that you noticed) and Strunk/White (whose style recommendations were decent, grammar knowledge less so) and other sources that provide style recommendations (AHD usage board) that you apparently can’t distinguish from research grammars. You further seem to believe that the only reason anyone would ever disagree with you is sexual politics. Because some who have written on this topic are feminists, all others, from Jesperson to Pinker, are apparently suspect.

Meanwhile, anyone with even an undergraduate knowledge of the history of the language knows that spurious rules have been invented whole cloth by prescriptive grammarians at least since Lowth and Murray in the 17th century. Some of these “rules” (e.g., Fowler’s proposed that/which rule, or your obsession with everybody/they) never matched standard English usage, not even the usage of educated, admired writers. This mismatch didn’t prevent some people from following the rules anyway, and some rules became shibboleths. Shibboleths are worth knowing because people like you believe in them–but shibboleths are all they are.

One way to learn about standard English usage is to study it: to analyze texts from before and after a given rule was invented, to study reliable corpora, to conduct scientific examinations of current usage. Another way is to learn from what the people who do conduct such research have discovered. You don’t have time or training for the first method, and you’re not willing to be convinced by the second. So nothing written in a blog comment is likely to persuade you either. That’s ok. This isn’t a life or death issue. Believe what you want to believe. Revel in your superiority.

E pur si muove.

As for “hero will take their ammunition,” being understood to mean hero will take his own ammo, I suppose gamers can have any kind of private code they want in the world that they build — Monty Python built a world where a name was spelled “throat warbler mangrove,” and pronounced “Smith” – but to ordinary users of English, outside of that private world, which is where we are, telling the person hero to “take their ammunition” means telling hero to take someone else’s ammunition. Hero will “take his/her ammo,” “take hero’s ammo,” “take the ammo provided,” “take own ammo”, are all pretty awkward, but as a simple directions or battlefield orders they beat “hero will take their ammo” for clarity, at least. “Hero will take his ammo” is neither awkward nor unclear. If the “his” grates, remember these words:

“It is not from criticism but from this world that stories come in the beginning; their origins are living reference plain to the writer’s eye, even though to his eye alone.”

They were written by the first writer to be published by the Library of America while still living: the writer — the female writer — Eudora Welty (The Writer’s Eye, 1989).

It is an interesting idea that you have of “two customs com[ing] down through English, one of using the word ‘him’ with ‘every’ and one of using the word ‘every’ with ‘them.’” This is what some reference books imply, but do not demonstrate. But the idea doesn’t appear to be reflected in actual written usage: the “Spurious Rule” was the mainstream usage, even when “every one” was used, rather than “every man”; the “singular they” looks to be a barely peripheral usage, unused by most authors. Your speculations about Austen aside, until we hear different from Martha’s references, Austen appears to be the exception, even among female novelists of the 19th century.

I agree that there are some usage problems with the Spurious Rule, and instances where it just cannot sensibly be used – there is a hole in the language – but the examples you discuss are not where the usage problems lie. As for sexual politics, that’s another matter.

I think this was intentionally confined to men only. While there were women on the ships at Trafalgar, this wasn’t officially known (even if every single official did actually know it).
So:
England expects that every man will do his duty makes sense in a context where it was officially believed that only men were involved.

For modern-up dating:
England expects that every sailer will do their duty.
England expects that every citizen will do their duty.

These modern alternatives both sound fine to me. The word “every” makes it clear that we’re talking in the singular.

And I will note that given the death rate at Trafalger, every surviving man (and woman) did wind up doing the duty of quite a few more people than theirselves.

I agree that “Every dog hath his day” is clearer than “Every dog hath their day”. Part of the difference here I think is that the explanation is metaphorical, Shakespeare was not making a point that only applied to dogs as in members of the family called canines. So the interest in being clear about whether you are talking about all people or only about men (vive la difference!) doesn’t bit here. People should use the language that clearly makes their point, not every grammatical rule is right for every single circumstance. “Every man should have his prostrate examined …” sounds fine to me, at least in terms of grammar, I am no doctor.

As for your rewriting of “The Hero took their money and rode to the next village”, cjymynes was talking about video games when the character could be played as either male or female. Under the normal customs of English usage a person who is known to be female is referred to by the female pronoun in language. If you refer to them with a male pronoun, you are breaching a custom. So here, in order to avoid breaking one custom of grammer, you advise breaking another one, one in my experience that is far more common. I do not understand your rationale.

As for your examples, it strikes me that there have been two customs come down through English, one of using the word “him” with “every” and one of using the word “every” with “them”. Much of these date from a time when women were not expected to have a role in public life, but instead stay at home raising babies. While there were many exceptions throughout history (eg Queen Mary I of England, Eleanor of Acquaitine) these were recognised exceptions and were often attacked for being involved in men’s work (in the sense referring to men only), see for example Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women”.) Now we are moving to a situation where reliable contraception means that far more women are engaged in public life, so there are more gains to being clear about when we are referring to all people as opposed to when we are only referring to men. It is noticeable that Jane Austen, who was writing books centered around women’s lives uses the singular “they” construction so much.

Some people are just hung up on clarity.

Leo, you ask: “To the extent sources quoted by anyone here have been so tainted [by the sexism issue], you may have a point. Do you have evidence of that?”

Direct evidence is impossible — I cannot read minds — but here is a representative comment on the crux of the issue by a source touted by Martha, Merriam_Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (under “everybody, everyone”):

“[T]here is an assertion [in another book] that reference to everyone (or everybody) by they, their, them is not sanctioned by good writing. The assertion is false. Such reference may be found in important literature and other reputable writing from the 16th century to the present.”

Following this categorical statement is a predictable listing of the same few references I mentioned earlier. No attempt is made to develop a broader factual basis for the sweeping claim made. This is not reference material, but polemic. The source admits, as it could scarcely deny, that this issue has received much attention in recent years from “those concerned with women’s issues.”

Also, look at this site, linked to by EV and another poster in this discussion, for the material on Austen:

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html#incorrectly

The site is devoted to an entirely one-sided presentation of the issue. Austen is highlighted, though she is apparently the only famous writer who regularly made use of the “singular they.” The other, familiar, stray instances of “singular they” usage by other authors are presented as if they were merely examples of wider, more regular usage, rather than what seems to be all that can be found. Immediately following this treatment is a section devoted to “Singular ‘their’ and linguistic sexism in English.” Of course, the correct position on the first issue is necessary to the desired solution to the second. I cannot connect the dots for you, but a review of this material will be all you need.

I always thought that lawyers — present-minded people mining the past for any snippet to use in a current argument, made very bad historians; apparently, linguists make even worse historians than do lawyers.

David McCourt: Leo, The issue of “sexism” and usage is irrelevant to my argument with Eugene, except to the extent that the issue has made some of the scholarship concerning past usage of the “singular they” result-oriented and over-stated.

To the extent sources quoted by anyone here have been so tainted, you may have a point. Do you have evidence of that?

David McCourt: I don’t believe I brought up sexism and usage; it seems to me that Laura did, and I was responding to the thought experiment she posed.

Actually, you mentioned it first.

I don’t believe I brought up sexism and usage

Except for this:

The singular “they” controversy is, for some, tied up with sexual politics, which for many outweighs any question of aesthetics — reactionary concept that that is.

Not that I have anything against googling through some 18th century texts, or divining the politics of someone else’s works cited page, but if you’re really interested in how standard English works, there are reference books you can consult, written by people who spend their careers studying how standard English works.

I don’t believe I brought up sexism and usage; it seems to me that Laura did, and I was responding to the thought experiment she posed.

I’m not sure how that contradicts what I said. I agree many of the common arguments against your preferred construction are essentially hermeneutic. But those are irrelevant to your argument with Eugene. Bringing them up in that context, as I believe you did with Martha, at best confuses the issue.

When I say enjoin, I’m not speaking literally. “Criticize and stigmatize,” as you call it, is all the prescriptive grammarians ever did as well.

I’m not speaking of Laura or EV, but I think the statement you quote is an accurate statement of fact. Just look for yourself at the bibliography attached to one site, already linked in these discussions, concerning the “singular they” issue:

Abbott, Gerry. “Unisex `they’”, English Language Teaching Journal, 1984. 38, 45-48.
Baron, Dennis. Grammar and Gender, Chapter 10. 1986. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bodine, Anne. “Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar: Singular `they’, Sex-indefinite `he’, and `he or she’”, Language in Society, 1975. 4, 129-146.
articles “Agreement: indefinite pronouns” and “They, their, them” in E. Ward Gilman ed. Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. 1989. Springfield Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster.
Green, W. H. “Singular Pronouns and Sexual Politics”, College Composition and Communication, 1977. 28, 150-153.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. “Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness” and “A Person Paper on Purity in Language”, Chapters 7 and 8 in Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, 136-167. 1985. New York: Basic Books.
Jespersen, Otto. Section 5.56 in A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part II: Syntax, First Volume, 137-140, addenda p. 495. 1913 (1948).
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “The Hidden Joke: Generic Uses of Masculine Terminology”, in Mary Vetterling-Braggin ed. Sexist Language: A Modern Philosophical Analysis, 116-31. 1981. New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
Martyna, Wendy. “The Psychology of the Generic Masculine”, in Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman, eds. Women and Language in Literature and Society, 69-78. 1980. New York: Praeger.
Meyers, Miriam Watkins. “Forms of they with Singular Noun Phrase Antecedents”, Word, 1993. 44 181-191.
Miller, Casey and Kate Swift. Words and Women. 1976. Garden City, New York: Anchor.
Mühlhäusler, Peter and Rom Harré. “He, She, or It: The Enigma of Grammatical Gender”, Chapter 9 in Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity, 229-247. 1991. Basil Blackwell.
Newman, Michael. “Pronominal Disagreements: The Stubborn Problem of Singular Epicene Antecedents”, Language in Society, 1992. 21, 447-475.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct, 378-379. 1994. New York: W. Morrow.
Sklar, E. S. “The Tribunal of Use: Agreement in Indefinite Constructions”, College Composition and Communication, 1988. 39, 410-422.
Stanley, J. P. “Sexist Grammar”, College English, 1978. 39, 800-811.

David McCourt: many of the linguistic attackers of “prescription” when it comes to the “singular they” are animated by the wish to enjoin the use of the generic male. That is the mother of all prescriptions at work here.

Yes and no. First, I’d say “criticize and stigmatize” is more accurate than “enjoin.” Second, most people with this interest, e.g., Laura, aren’t attacking the grammatical prescription qua grammatical prescription. They’re advocating a social norm. For example, I typically use the aesthetically clunky “s/he” because the social sensitivity is more important to me than the aesthetic is. (My writing is bereft of style anyway, so it’s no loss.) You may prioritize the language rule, but don’t conflate the categories of the opposing arguments and objectives. And don’t conflate Laura’s argument with Eugene’s, which is independent of the social concerns.

Laura(southernxyl): Even his credit card is a Hooter’s card.

There’s a Hooters Visa card? Does using it earn Frequent Lapdance Miles?

things would be no better if the guy said he/she while hanging out at Hooters.

It wouldn’t occur to the guy hanging out at Hooters to say he/she, and that’s the problem.

Sometimes language illuminates thought. If the default pronoun is male, it’s a short hop from there to the default person being male. Females are an after-thought, a special case. You have people, and then you have women. As I said, maybe you have to be on the receiving end of this sort of thing to get it. It gets mighty tiresome, I can tell you. One feels downright invisible after a while. I can tell you that the generic “he” used not to bother me as much as it does now, having had this experience; and men getting indignant at the idea that they should not always use the generic “he”, insisting that it’s not a problem and no one with sense minds it, used not to bother me as much as it does now.

every one according to the gift which bounteous nature
Hath in him clos’d.

I am struck, in looking at the evidence for the supposed accepted use of the “singular they” down the centuries, by how sparse it really is. Apart from Jane Austen — there EV struck the mother lode at his first spadeful of earth, and Austen is trumpeted by the “singular use is OK” crowd — no authors are shown to have employed this usage with anything like regularity. Instead, the same few potted citations are continually given; these are more or less the same examples that were rooted out by Jespersen in 1894, with a few others, and have been handed down ever since.

What do they amount to? One instance in the King James Bible. Two in Shakespeare — and I see that one of these: “And every one to rest themselves betakes,” from the poem Lucrece was actually published in the original 1594 edition, and a second edition, as “And every one to rest himselve betakes,” being changed — by author?, by printer? – to “themselves” only in a third edition in 1600. Two (or one and a half) instances? Pretty thin gruel, out of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and two long narrative poems.

The rest of the evidence, Austen excepted, is of a similar sort: the odd citation here and there — one from Thackeray, one from Richardson, etc., — and a fairly long list of 50 or so can be constructed, of one example or so per decade, by reaching down to the likes of Sir Kenhelm Digby and Walter Bagehot for their solitary contributions. And this proves that the “singular they” has always been accepted as an alternate and perfectly good construction? Only to the already convinced, or to those looking for a justification for the abolition of the generic “he/his/him.”

I did look at some of Locke’s writings — Two Treatises on Government, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — and found one instance of “singular they,” amid several score instances where the “Spurious Rule” is followed. I checked Milton’s works, admittedly, with something less than a fine toothed comb, and could find no instances of the singular they. But they’d already be on everyone’s list, right?

Just where is all the evidence that this rule has been regarded as spurious by our best writers in centuries past, and that they embraced, or regularly employed, an alternate usage? One presumably could construct a similar list of stray violations by the illustrious of just about any rule of grammar or usage, so proving, by these lights, that we have no rules. If this rule is to be abhorred as truly spurious, surely something more in the way of evidence is needed than this.

The last sentence is not the problem with this clod boss, the rest of the story is, and things would be no better if the guy said he/she while hanging out at Hooters. My own boss is a woman, who uses “he” as the generic, because she loves the language, and doesn’t think that making her writing less clear will solve sex discrimination.

Your post does point to one irony though: many of the linguistic attackers of “prescription” when it comes to the “singular they” are animated by the wish to enjoin the use of the generic male. That is the mother of all prescriptions at work here.

“The Hero took their money and rode to the next village.”

This makes it sound as if the hero took some other people’s money, rather than his own, and is one of the reason’s why this usage is frowned upon. Better to be supposedly sexist than definitely muddled and ambiguous.

Here is a thought-experiment for you, based, sadly, on my personal experience. Suppose that you are a woman, and the only woman on the management team at a chemical plant. The plant manager who hired you, and wants your valuable input into management decisions, is fired when the plant is bought, and the replacement manager loovveesss to go to Hooter’s all the time. Even his credit card is a Hooter’s card. Suddenly the on-site management meetings are a thing of the past, and management decisions are made by “the guys” at 2-hour lunches at Hooter’s, to which you are not invited, b/c it would never occur to anyone to ask you to go there. After the meetings, the production manager, who knew you from before, comes into your office to debrief you on what was decided, and when you say things like, “How are we going to do such-and-such without so-and-so?”, things that you would have said at the meeting had you been there, his response is “Oh.”

Now a man tells you that the default pronoun being “he” doesn’t bother him, so it shouldn’t bother you either.

How do you imagine you would feel about that?