Sorry for the off topic grammar question, but am I the only one who finds it confusing how people have started to use plural pronouns to refer to individual people?
> My boss invited me for a one-on-one chat where they politely asked me to revert my change. I was aghast. The old code was a mess, and mine was clean! I begrudginly complied, but it took me years to see they were right.
The first they sounds like the boss and the colleague were in the same room, but it can't because he says one-on-one. Still, presumably both the boss and the colleague wanted the revert. But the second they is really ambiguous. Was the boss right or the colleague?
Probably, I didn't even notice it in the OP, and if some other reader noticed anything, they were probably able to read on without much confusion anyway.
(Did you find that one right there above confusing? I suspect not?)
Indeed. Maybe my English skills are fading with time, but my impression was that it works there because it's unclear who you're talking about. "Some other" is singular, but multiple people could have noticed that so it makes sense to use the plural there. It's kind of like how in American English they say "France _has_ won the WC", but in British English they say "France _have_ won the WC" (because a team has multiple people).
But saying "The boss fired me. They are awful." sounds no different than "The boss fired me. He are awful." or "They is awful." My auto parser is failing and I have to think it through.
Note of course you don't say "they is awful", you still conjugate they with "are", even when singular. For an unknown person, for a specific person, either way.
