Now that the year is about to come to a close, you can expect all the year-end roundups and summaries that defined 2019. One such annual highlight is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2019. They have just announced that this year’s awardee is none other than the pronoun “they.” As per Merriam-Webster, lookups for the pronoun rose to 313 percent in 2019.
The proper use of “they” has been redefined in September 2019 by Merriam-Webster. According to the publishing company, it may also now be used to pertain to a person whose gender identity is non-binary.
In October of the same year, the American Psychological Association (APA) also began endorsing the use of the pronoun in singular form, which may be used to refer to a nonspecific third person whose gender is unstated or unrelated to the given situation. The move to recommend the use of singular “they” was constructed by APA to promote “bias-free language guidelines” when writing.
From The Candy Bulletin Community
