this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Singular they sometimes works and sometimes it sounds odd. It usually sounds off when used by itself without following something explicitly singular.
"The customer forgot their wallet. Can you bring it to them?" sounds correct but if you just do
"They forgot to pay their bill" it sounds like you're referring to multiple people instead of a singular person.
Edit: Changed to a better example.
Does it? If multiple people left multiple wallets on the table, it would be, "They left their wallets on the table." Multiple people can't really leave a single wallet behind. Or at least that would be very unusual and unintuitive.
True. I'll change it to a (hopefully) better example.
“A customer forgot to pay their bill” sounds totally normal to me though, you just need a reference before throwing a pronoun out there, if the context doesn’t clear up the number of people referred to.
I agree.
This sounds normal to me, how else would you word it?
If it was a singular customer, I would say "He forgot to pay his bill" (or she/her depending on the gender).