Many years ago, my elementary school teachers taught that a pronoun must match its antecedent – the noun to which it refers – in number, gender, and person. In “John read that rule from his book,” the pronoun “his” is singular, masculine, and third-person. That’s straight-up grammar.

Yet every week I read online writers who employ the plural “they” to refer to a singular person. Sometimes sloppy writing or ignorance is the cause of this misuse. An example: “Someone in Congress needs to address the skyrocketing national debt, and they need to do it immediately.” Someone is a singular noun and demands a singular pronoun. This mistake is easily corrected, however, by changing “someone” to “some members.”

On other occasions, the writer clearly intends this erroneous usage, notably in the use

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