A Bit About Words — the columnist considers recent objections to something I do in my writing, the use of ‘they’ for a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. “Since feminist writers drew our attention to the fact that the English language has

deeply ingrained male-biased conventions, those of us with a conscience have tried to find a way of compensating for our lack of a pronoun which applies

equally to male or female referents.” I believe that such sensitivity is important, and that the form as well as the content of good writing can be consciousness-raising. I’ve considered and rejected other proposed alternatives as less preferable to ‘they’. Surprisingly, the objection that this use of ‘they’ is an inelegant modernism is countered in this essay with examples of this usage by preeminent English-language writers dating back five centuries. [via Daily Dean] And more commentary on linguistic artifice. This time from Safire, about, er, archers [via metaforage]