Top all-time · #15877
Stroppy Editor
Personal blog · stroppyeditor.wordpress.comwritingculture
Stroppy Editor is a personal blog at stroppyeditor.wordpress.com about writing and culture. Since 2018, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked on HN as a reference on the history and acceptance of singular 'they', and as a review of Fowler's Modern English Usage dictionary. Commenters cite it as support for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Minding other people’s language. A lot.
Most-linked posts?
- /2015/04/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-singular-they/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-06-21
What Hacker News says?
Singular 'they' has been in use for hundreds of years. See e.g. this article that I linked to elsewhere in the thread: https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/everything-yo... Note that many of the historical examples involve contexts where gender would not even have been in doubt (e.g. all students at Cambridge would have been men).
Comment linking /2015/04/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-singular-they/
on “Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502”Submitted Licence or license? Practice or practise? (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSingular 'they' is pretty well established usage by now, regardless of gender considerations. Even people who complain about it still use it: https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/everything-yo...
Comment linking /2015/04/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-singular-they/
on “Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502”There is no rule in English that says a pronoun cannot be both singular and plural. Here's a simple example: "Which of you thinks you are the smartest?" I used "you" as both singular and plural in that sentence, and no one would blink an eye at it. "They" is used the same way as "you", as either a singular or plural pronoun depending on the context. This was the case in English for centuries, until some prescriptivi…
Comment linking /2015/04/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-singular-they/
on “Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee”See https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/everything-yo... for more than everything that you might want to know about the use of they as a singular pronoun. Even those who think that they object to it, frequently use it without noticing. The upshot is that whining from self-important grammarians notwithstanding, English has always had a third person singular pronoun in common use. It has been used in every…
Comment linking /2015/04/21/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-singular-they/
on “People who disagree aren't trying to make things complex”Speaking of period pieces, the 3rd Edition (1996) has itself become one. The current 4th Edition (2015), edited by Jeremy Butterfield, is also highly regarded. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/978019966... A selected review [not mine, no interest but literary and informative]: https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/fowlers-dicti...
Comment linking /2015/07/16/fowlers-dictionary-of-modern-english-usage-4th-edition-by-jeremy-butterfield/
on “Elegant Variations and All That (1996)”
