they is awesome

i wholly embrace the use of the third-person plural ("they") to represent a gender-neutral third-person singular -- as in, "if i were to get a new roommate, they would have to like cats." by my unscientific estimation, at least 90% of americans use "they" in that sense in casual speech, but most learned folks -- my old foes, the prescriptivists -- find it abhorrent and uneducated in written form. "it's just wrong!" they exclaim. "don't those ignorant fools realize that it's a plural? it simply meaningless and confusing to pretend it's a singular."

actually, though, the pronoun conveys its intended meaning perfectly well. everyone understands what it means in context. and furthermore, it serves a very useful function, since english otherwise lacks a convenient and polite way to refer to absent or imaginary humans in a gender-neutral way. ("it" is considered impolite, since we only use it to refer to non-human nouns like animals, objects or concepts; "he" is sexist, and "he or she" awkward.)

further, there's plenty of historical precedent for this kind of change. for instance, ever wonder why we used to say "thee" and "thou" instead of "you"? well, "thou" used to be the singular versions of the second-person pronoun, and "you" the plural. "thou" is a cognate of the french tu and german du. "you" was originally the plural, which later began to be used as the formal version of the singular. again, think of french vous or german sie, which serve both as the plural and the formal singular. over time, we dropped the old singular/informal form altogether, probably out of a growing egalitarianism. (and now we have to invent new second-person plurals, like "y'all", to fill in that lexical gap.)

my point is that the elements of our language are constantly shifting to take on new useful roles. to adopt such new forms isn't incorrect or sloppy -- it's natural and useful. those shifts help our language more accurately reflect our reality and the concepts we want to express, which is the whole point of language, after all.

if anyone disagrees with me, they're an idiot. :) rather, they're standing in the way of progress for the sake of tradition -- or, less charitably, to preserve the power of that exclusive minority with enough education to mimic perfectly the archaic conventions of our language.