Am I talking about Sally and Brian or only Sally? Does the context help at all?
"Sally is working with Brian. She is working on a method to diagnose cancer in lizards."
It is now immediately recognized that I am talking about Sally's work. Perhaps Brian is working on a way to detect clogged arteries in lizards and is working on lizard-related research with Sally.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/01...
I agree that the write-up is flawed - it tries to take on a deeper problem which someone smarter would probably have solved ages ago, had it been simpler.
The thesis boils down to - we have to understand cases where gender shouldn't matter, and have the tools to be able to write appropriately. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
"are they going to leave the house?" is correct only when you're asking it to the subject itself. Otherwise you would just use he/she or a title name (queen, king, lord etc)
If you're looking to replace he/she you should not use an honorific form. You should either use "it", or invent a fourth third person (es, ish, woot, you name it).
Still the problem stays: political correctness traded for ambiguity.
>Where they could refer to a single person or many people. The listener would resolve based on context.
The listener would have trouble with my example and be unable to resolve based on context.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/01...
To respond to the point on recognizing when to use honorifics - various languages around the world conjugate singular third person honorifics to a plural verb, and that's what I was referring to.
I wrote the article and will happily claim it's flawed - it tries to take on an old, deep problem with not too many clear outs. It also tries to focus on a specific problem many institutions around the world have with unnecessary bias invoking writing styles. It tries to provide options that can be used practically, while understanding trade-offs.
http://www.copyediting.com/epicene-they-gaining-greater-acce...