Grammar Girl here, today's topic is a contentious language landmine.

Can you use they and there when you don't know a person's sex?

In other words, can they and there be gender-neutral single pronouns?

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To be clear, the problem we're talking about today is how to complete a sentence, such

as, when a student succeeds, blank should thank blank teacher.

At this point, writers struggle because English has a big gaping pronoun hole.

We have no word to describe a single person if we don't know whether he or she is male

or female.

We could write, when a student succeeds, he should thank his teacher.

She should thank her teacher.

He or she should thank his or her teacher or something else.

A listener named Betty summed it up best by saying that he or she seems to awkward and

he seems sexist.

...