&gt; <i>I think jpmattia was joking.</i><p>Guilty as charged, your honor.<p>&gt; <i>But it&#x27;s fascinating how, when someone mistakenly thinks that it&#x27;s a new proposed rule and tries to apply it, they frequently come up with an awkward overcorrection</i><p>I&#x27;d note that there is a great deal of verbiage about grammar rules requiring rewrite to allow singular <i>they</i> .  For example: A foreign speaker would be well within bounds to look at the first google hit for &quot;define are&quot; [1] :<p><pre><code>  are1
  är,ər&#x2F;
  2nd person singular present and 1st, 2nd, 3rd person plural present of be.
</code></pre>
Google should note that &quot;are&quot; is also 3rd person singular present, consistent with 500 years of usage.  But we also have to point out that singular &quot;are&quot; is disallowed in cases other than they, and we can&#x27;t even add a gender-specific conjugation, since the neuter &quot;it&quot; is still not paired with &quot;are&quot;.<p>Fortunately, rules in language are not subject to mathematical rigor, and people and authors and poets (and smartasses) are given free license to use language in any way that facilitates communication.