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Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by danans on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:36PM (#14996089)
> the waiter messed up because they're a jerk

That's a subordinate clause where "jerk" is referring to the waiter, not the main subject, hence it's not circular.

Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by ams6110 on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:43PM (#14996129)
And people think singular "they" is OK in writing.

Try:

the waiter messed up because he's a jerk.

Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by yorwba on Saturday August 12, 2017 @12:40AM (#14996505)
That's not a unique problem of they:

"The man shoved the waiter because he was in his way."

Pronouns only have a few bits of information, everything else has to be inferred from context. (A big problem in natural language processing.)

Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by tatterdemalion on Saturday August 12, 2017 @02:56AM (#14996790)
This doesn't do anything at all to resolve the ambiguity in this sentence.
Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by PrunJuice on Friday August 11, 2017 @11:11PM (#14996227)
"They" is generally accepted as a singular gender neutral pronoun.
Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by jon_richards on Saturday August 12, 2017 @12:35AM (#14996488)
And has been since the Canterbury Tales! It's a modern development that it isn't considered "correct" English.
Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by Normal_gaussian on Saturday August 12, 2017 @04:19AM (#14997004)
600 years is long enough for me
Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by oddlyaromatic on Saturday August 12, 2017 @11:52AM (#14998354)
Here's a short review on the use of the singular "they". It is OK. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/singular-nonbi...
Re:A Theory of Jerks (2014) by tnone on Saturday August 12, 2017 @10:52AM (#14998068)
If this is such a problem, do you think it's a problem too that English doesn't distinguish between singular and plural you?