Comment by SoftTalker
3 years ago
In an era when “they” can be a singular reference, worrying about the typography of various dashes seems like a pointless concern. Whether a hyphen, en-dash, or em-dash is used has far less impact on clarity than pronoun-antecedent disagreement.
the singular they with singular _agreeing_ antecedent has been in use since the 14th C. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=they
and the modern hyphen that sits on the same line as the text is from… Gutenberg. 1455. 15th C.
maybe after almost 700 years we can stop complaining that non-binary and trans people are ruining language, and start accepting that they can be singular and plural. and that it has uses to refer to persons of unknown gender or as a standin for a known gender. it’s pretty common and is not going to change because you don’t like it.
Not according to all the grammar I ever learned. It’s not a trans/gender thing. It’s lazy and unclear writing. It would be much better to have declared a new singular gender neutral pronoun than having to disambiguate “they” every time it is used.
I don't see the link "they" and dashes. This seems like two completely separate matters / whataboutism.