We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12259967 and marked it off-topic.

Can be used that way. But should it be? I for one am all for coming up with a gender neutral singular third person pronoun. But I would love it if it wasn't one that already means something completely different.

Yes it can be, and if that were the intention here (rather than a mistake) it is a good example of poor usage. A sentence such as "Julia Evans writes on their blog" introduces a lot of unnecessary ambiguity if "their" = "her".

How are you supposed to find out the pronoun that someone prefers in order to write that though?

I assumed I was being downvoted for being off-topic, but perhaps it was because my comment is construed as gender-normative. I was speaking about the misuse of the singular they as separate from gender identification--i.e. presuming you know the gender someone prefers--and I think that point is valid.

I haven't considered the situation you bring up. I am for the singular they when it is being used to describe and indeterminate person. Are you suggesting we use singular they for a particular person until we get explicit confirmation about their pronoun preference?

I can't imagine that making a good faith guess at an appropriate gender pronoun would ever draw criticism.

I wonder if you weren't downvoted for using the subjunctive mood in your comment ("if that were the intention here") which seems to imply that you believe it was not the intention and was instead a "mistake".

You don't fucking care. You write ‘her’ if it's a girl and ‘him’ if it's a boy, then if they ask for something different you apologize and correct yourself. This isn't tumblr.

Well exactly - you don't care and you just write 'their'. You're the one suggesting that we should go out of our way to do detective work to find some evidence of whether someone looks like a man or a woman. It's easier to just say 'their'.

Also, I've seen several comments here of someone making what I presume are honest mistakes in using the wrong pronoun and being publicly shamed for it.

I don't know if it's necessarily easier to read, you are introducing a lot of ambiguity. When you say "Julia's writing on their blog," it sounds like she's writing on a blog that belongs to other people.

> it sounds like she's writing on a blog that belongs to other people

It doesn't to me. Maybe it varies by region.

How do you judge if it is a boy or a girl?

For example, what would you refer to me as? "Nadya wrote on her blog" or "Nadya wrote on his blog"? (hint: You'd need to dig rather deep into my post history to find the "proper" one.)

@ruraljuror's example

Further context removes that ambiguity. Although you could rephrase it as "Julia wrote on their own blog" or even remove the pronoun altogether: "Julia wrote on Julia's blog" (which is only ambiguous if there is another Julia).

In that case I like ‘their own’ best, but when it can be inferred from the name then there's no reason to complicate things. If someone's special enough to use their own pronouns then they can ask for it to be corrected.

And Nadya is hard—I would go for gender neutral on that one. :-) (It's not that I dislike singular ‘they’, but sometimes it can make sentences awkward.)