There’s some even older UI bits buried around in there:

Right, I quoted a bit from the whole-ass Wikipedia page on Singular they in my response to you. I’m aware that there’s multiple usages, and have said as much in my replies to you. I’m not sure what your point is.

Sure, that’s a great discussion to have, and I’m glad you spelled it out well. I just dislike people trying to claim that using “they” to refer to a specific, known individual is “nothing new because Shakespeare did it”. He didn’t, and it muddies the waters of the conversation to spread falsehoods like that.

See my other comments in this thread, but Shakespeare did not use singular they to refer to a specific, known person. That is a new invention.

Sorry, I thought your question was asked in good faith. I’m commenting because the claim that Shakespeare used singular they to refer to a known, specific individual is factually incorrect. I don’t know the entire history of singular they, but I do have access to wikipedia just like you. It says ‘In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged for people who do not identify as male or female, as in, for example, “This is my friend, Jay. I met them at work.”’ Does that answer your question?

Your Kelly example is similarly confusing. The “engineer” example is also confusing, but because English already conflates those two meanings, I at least know that I’m parsing a confusable sentence and can pick up on context clues.

If I were writing that, I’d say “Yeah well, that engineer don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.” The “they’re” is then not confusing at all.

I’m not sure, and I’d be interested in reading more from someone that actually has done their research and doesn’t claim that Shakespeare used singular they in that manner

Sure, I think we agree?

Your comment makes it clear there is confusion. To clear it up, using singular they to refer to a specific, known individual is never something Shakespeare did, and is a recent invention. It’s not transphobic to be grumpy about people trying to introduce a new usage for an existing word. People as a whole don’t like change.

This misses an important distinction that singular they was never used to refer to a known, specific individual until recently, and was certainly never used by Shakespeare that way.

See my other comments in this thread as well, but using singular they to refer to a specific, known individual was never something that Shakespeare did, and that is the usage that people are up in arms about. Your example uses singular they to refer to an unknown person, which is a usage that’s been around for centuries, yes.

A few years is a loose term, but it was certainly not in use by Shakespeare, unlike what people try to claim.

Your confusion here is exactly what I’m trying to clear up. We know the gender of the person in the Shakespeare quote you linked to (“man”), but nothing else. It’s a placeholder term that doesn’t refer to a specific, known individual. Shakespeare never said anything like “Here’s Frank, they’re a cool guy”, that would be considered ungrammatical until a few years ago.

You’re confusing two different usages. Singular they to refer to an unknown or undetermined person has centuries-old usage, yes. Using it to refer to a known single person is an invention of the last few years.

Lots of people talk past each other on this. Singular they to refer to a known single person is an invention of the last few years and is the thing that a lot of people are up in arms about. It gets confused with the centuries-old usage of using it to refer to an unknown or undetermined person. Your first example is in line with the latter, and your second example is the new usage. TBH I’d be confused by your second example. Is Frank part of some larger group that doesn’t know what they’re talking about? Or is it only Frank that doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

This looks like a good library/tool: https://crates.io/crates/xcompress

XCompress is a free file archiver utility on Linux, providing multi-format archiving to and extracting from ZIP, Z, GZIP, BZIP2, LZ, XZ, LZMA, 7ZIP, TAR, RAR and ZSTD.