Singular “They” Again

I may have solved the “singular they” problem. The problem is that in English we don’t have a singular, non-gendered pronoun. We have “he” or “she”, but no pronoun for the person whose sex we don’t know, or for the person who doesn’t want to identify as either male or female. We have the neutral pronoun "it", but that will not do.

This was a problem even before the non-binary age. Old grammatical farts like me would say “he or she”, but that would become very clumsy. Now that some people do not wish to be referred to as “he” or “she”,  the problem is even greater. Here is a version of a news item that I saw this morning. I have changed the details.

Winston is missing. They were last seen driving up the Pat Bay Highway in a Ford truck.

Of course, at first I wondered, who was with him? Then I suspected that Winston didn’t identify as either male or female, or the reporter was afraid of using the wrong singular pronoun and committing an act of micro-aggression.

In 2014, the Vancouver School Board attempted to introduce the neutral pronouns “xe”, "xem" and "xyr”. Bizarre as these pronouns would have sounded, at least it would have been clear how many persons were involved. But as far as I know, the pronouns haven't caught on.

So singular “they”, and “them”, may be here to say. Here is my solution, and I'm probably not the first to suggest it. To avoid confusion, if we know that a person does not wish to be referred to as “he” or “she”, then let’s make the verb singular as well.

Winston is missing. They was last seen driving up the Pat Bay Highway in a Ford Truck.

Then we'll know that he was alone.

For more on "singular they", microagression, and the Woke, see the Table of Contents.