The Good of the Many Versus the One

(Image from the Oxford Dictionaries blog)

Readers of this modest journal may have noted the inconsistent treatment of the third-person singular pronoun. When the antecedent is unknown, your humble chronicler most often uses the traditional he and occasionally he or she [but never the abominable (s)he--I can see Mrs. Matthews, my sixth-grade English teacher, frowning in disapproval].

After two generations of wrestling with awkward-sounding alternatives, consensus may be coalescing around they, which, though plural, has the virtue of being gender-neutral.

there is no question that “they” is more idiomatic than clunky alternatives that include both genders, as in “he or she,” “he/she” or “(s)he.”

When pressed on whether “they” could serve as a singular pronoun, [lexicographers] pointed out that it already has done so for about seven centuries, appearing in the work of writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Jane Austen.

Thank goodness I'm not sitting for the SAT's.