7 Synonyms and Antonyms for They
If someone tried to coin a new word to replace singular they, they'd have trouble even getting people to recognise that the mystery new word is a pronoun. Then this new word gets flagged up by a spell checker if someone tries to reuse it, so hardly anyone bothers; they rephrase the sentence instead. Fundamentally though, it's just not necessary, people have been using singular they for years, they¹ just don't realise it – did you on reading this paragraph?
Replace a to be verb + a prepositional phrase with a bold verb Vague & Wordy
Electric car technology was in existence as early as 1830.
Negative advertising is influential on voters’ perceptions of candidates.
I am in receipt of your letter. Bold & Specific
Electric car technology existed as early as 1830.
Negative advertising influences voters’ perceptions of candidates.
I have received your letter/ I received your letter.
There's no authority for English, even for a single major English-speaking country, so there's no-one to mandate the existence of a new word, never mind its use. Such authorities tend to move slowly, and prefer established words to creating new ones in the same niche, and there are arguments for he as well as they as a gender-neutral singular (linguistic arguments that miss the point). So we consider the situation where ordinary people want to use gender-neautral language.
31 Synonyms & Antonyms for THEN
Is it? English is still a living language (hence why words get added to the dictionary every year), and if common patterns continue, they often become lexicon. So what was wrong before is now correct.
As other answers note, the history of trying to invent a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English is littered with failures, nonce usages, and usages that become popular in insular communities but don't catch hold in dialect-wide populations. Indeed, while any invented word has hurdles to overcome before it is accepted and widely used, pronouns are an especially difficult class of word to change. Why is that? What would have to happen for an invented gender neutral pronoun to be accepted in English?
Is it? English is still a living language (hence why words get added to the dictionary every year), and if common patterns continue, they often become lexicon. So what was wrong before is now correct.
The following is a brief listing of commonly usedtransitional words and phrases one finds in daily speech:The student writer who masters the usage of transitional words andphrases is well on the way to achieving coherence (a smooth flow in thewriting that is logical and easy to follow) in one's writing.
American Psychological Association
That they is the pronoun preferred by a great many non-binary and gender-queer people today continues to reduce the pressure to do otherwise. While those who do favour an explicitly singular gender-neutral pronoun will lead us to use ze of zir, or thon of thon, it doesn't lead to a strong pressure to replace they and them in other uses.
6 Overused Words (And What to Say Instead) | Australian Writing Tips
Variants like themself also show considerable promise, since the form *predates *themselves** but had fallen in popularity in the early modern period (). It encounters the problem that themselves, with the plural selves, may be perceived as plural in singular contexts. Having the available historical context, and the well-known word self available, helps the argument for themself, though it has not caught on widely in publications.
Make use of the words people, individual(s), one
Xe and hir do okay, at least in writing, because they are relatively close to a recognizable pronoun. With xe, a reader can puzzle out that the h/sh of he or she have been replaced by an x that is neither one. Hir looks kind of halfway between him and her. Neither is quite as familiar as they.
This experiment resulted in some important findings
I have long used ‘they’, as opposed to he/she, unless I am absolutely certain that the person to whom I may be referring is of one, or other, gender. I see nothing wrong at all in its use, it certainly doesn’t look odd to me. Perhaps the perception comes more with those whose first language has words with a gender, buts just me guessing.
List of 50 In Conclusion Synonyms—Write Better with ProWritingAid
Conversely, while people are beginning to be more respectful of other genders, the argument against grammatical plurality being used with singular antecedents has lost favour. As such a reason why people may have favoured he over they 150 years ago or "he/she" over they 50 years ago is no longer as strongly with us.