Yet so apparently deeply felt was the proscription against the singular “they” that only rarely, once-in-a-blue-moon rarely, did I meet up with a writer who reached for it. And I did what any self-respecting copy editor in those days would do: I got rid of it. But how? How can you dispose of a he-that’s-not-a-he without resorting to a they-that’s-not-a-they without tying into knots either oneself or someone else’s prose? One easy out was always to grab the opportunity to turn a singular noun into a plural one, thus obviating the need for a singular pronoun: “A student should be able to study
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