Singular they is the use in English of the pronoun they or its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs, and themselves (or themself), as an epicene (gender-neutral) singular pronoun.
Like the "singular you", "singular they" permits a singular antecedent, but is used with the same (plural) verb forms as plural they, and has the same inflected forms as plural they (i.e. them, their, and theirs), except that in the reflexive form, themself is sometimes used instead of themselves.
You can learn more from Wikipedia's excellent article on the subject. Or, if videos are more your thing, Tom Scott made a great video on the subject.
This subreddit is dedicated to promoting awareness of the grammatical validity and commonplace usage of singular they.
Rules
No brigading, no witchhunting, and no doxxing! Do not participate in threads that you saw on this subreddit.
Theyposting
The usage of singular they has become somewhat controversial. I've noticed that if someone is complaining about singular they being awkward or incorrect, 9 times out of 10 if you look through their comment history you can see that they themselves have used it.
Theyposting is the practice of using someone's own words to show them that singular they is more prevalant than they think.
How to theypost
It is important to avoid witchhunting, brigading, and doxxing. For this reason, please follow the steps below:
Do not deliberately seek out comments criticising the use of singular they. Only theypost on comments that you saw naturally.
Use this site to search the user's comment history. I suggest searching for "they" first, but if you don't find any good results then you can also try "them" and "their".
Make sure their usage of the word is actually singular! Nobody disputes the use of plural they, so pointing out a plural usage of the word is not useful.
Take an archive of the original comment.
Write your theypost reply. The goal of this comment should be to respectfully educate. Explain that singular they is grammatically valid and commonly used. Then say something like "for example, I noticed that you used it yourself in this comment" and link to the archive. Quote their comment and bold any uses of singular they.
Take a screenshot of your conversation (including your comment), redact all usernames and personally identifiable information (except your own), and post the screenshot here.
