Thank you for posting that, too. I think there was a touch of academic elitism in my response, too (“man, that’s old news! We talked about that in my undergrad ling classes.”), which is silly.

I should also admit that I was directed to mark such usage wrong on essays I graded for a liberal studies final. He/she is calcified as the singular human pronoun in formal usage so it’ll take a while longer for the English teachers to let go of it.

Besides, I don’t expect anything definitive from A Way With Words, just like I don’t expect definitive science information from Ira Flatow. I listen to them each week to discover interesting aspects of our fair language, like using “they” as a singular pronoun.

Given that, though, it’ll take a while for the ramifications to get settled. It would still feel odd to meet a woman with a newborn on the street and say, “How beautiful! How old are they?” It’ll catch on eventually, though, and replace the awkward, “How beautiful? How old is… h… sh… your baby?”

Still, I’ve been noticing this for a while. And I think it’s useful and like that it evolved on its own rather than being introduced artificially. The only time it struck me as odd was when an acquaintance referred to his partner as “they”. I assumed (and was correct) that this acquaintance had a same-sex partner but wasn’t sure how I’d react to that.

My mom still thinks it’s strange that a female can refer to her all-female group of friends as “guys,” but I think that’s been normal since I was a little kid!