&quot;They&quot; isn&#x27;t really used illogically.<p><i>If someone wants to understand, they only need to examine it beyond what they learned as rules in English class.</i><p>The use of &quot;they&quot; is usually general, when not really pointing to a specific person. If Dennis is standing in front of me, and someone asked me whom to speak to, I wouldn&#x27;t point at Dennis and say, &quot;They is the one to speak to&quot;.<p>But if I was talking about DennisP online, and I didn&#x27;t know who was behind that vague identifier, and someone asked whom could help, I might say, &quot;I talked to DennisP earlier, and they helped me with my problem.&quot;<p>For all I know, &quot;DennisP&quot; is an organization, or shared account. It&#x27;s a vague generality, when the individual attributes of a person are unknown or irrelevant.<p>It&#x27;s like when <i>one</i> speaks in general ways that apply to all mankind, and <i>you</i> might even use the word &quot;you&quot; to refer to, not YOU, but <i>anyone</i>.<p>&quot;They&quot; works great because a group is a vague fuzzy kind of thing. In the plural form, speaking of them, over there, and their attributes, it&#x27;s not so much about the plurality, as it is the abstract fuzziness of it.<p>All that we&#x27;re doing is applying that same fuzziness in the direction of what could possibly be a smaller target in terms of numeration.<p>That is why, I don&#x27;t think those rules about singular and plural were ever really correct. It isn&#x27;t the numbers that we were trying to convey with the words, but the fuzziness.<p>&quot;He&quot; and &quot;She&quot; are referencing specific object types with common properties across the whole of the specific object. Whereas &quot;They&quot; is referencing an object with either mixed or unknown properties.<p>Do you see what I&#x27;m saying? It isn&#x27;t about the count, but the uniqueness of known attributes for a specific target. It just so happens that when you have many of an object, the commonality of attributes blurs, and so the &quot;they&quot; pointer appears to be about the number of objects. Then some people who aren&#x27;t thinking beyond that get upset if you violate the number when using they to point to &gt;1.<p>When really, it&#x27;s just about fuzz.<p>I don&#x27;t use &quot;they&quot; as any kind of feminist thing. I just think that &quot;he or she&quot; is not only incredibly distracting and inefficient, but it is the illogical one. Also referring to fuzzy things as &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot; are both wrong, because they are trying to instantiate objects using a template that requires certain attributes when the properties of the spoken of object are unknown or irrelevant to the conveyed concept.<p>&quot;He&quot; when the boy template is needed. &quot;She&quot; when the girl template is needed. &quot;They&quot; when a fuzzy generic container works better. The number of people references is irrelevant. Just like how an organization may contain many people, but we refer to it as if it were a person. Even an individual person is an organization of smaller components.