A plee for singular they and against plural they

jjoan ttaber altieri (whoever that is) has written about "the dilemma created by the fact that English doesn't have a 'grammatically acceptable' gender-free third-person singular pronoun to reference a person."

native speakers of English automatically rely on singular they (their, them) as the pronoun of choice; for example:

I don't care what everyone else is doing; they're not me.

If someone calls, tell them I'm out.

. . .

. . .strict grammarians -- especially those who control the citadels of formal education and publishing -- dictate that the epicene pronoun they reference plural, not singular, antecedents.

But singular they has a long history of usage. See the bottom of altieri's article and Henry Churchyard's page on singular they/their for more examples.

On a related note: here is a satirical post criticizing the use of plural they. Let's go back to the good old days when the proper plural third-person pronoun was hi­e.