this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
38 points (93.2% liked)
Open Source
43850 readers
372 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you want to make it singular like he/she/it, then make it singular.
He has a car, she has a car, they has a car.
He was friendly, she was friendly, they was friendly.
He sounds fine, she sounds fine, they sounds fine.
Notice the issue?
A singular they is an okay concept, but you then have actually allow it to be singular, in every use - a direct replacement for he/she with no other word or sentence changes necessary.
Sure, if English was consistent. But that's not how people actually speak. And people do use singular 'they', that's not a command or a suggestion, just an observation. It's only when people think too hard about it that they say things like 'he or she', and even after, they often slip back into 'they' despite themself.