Good grief. If you want to write objective, do so, and ommit personal pronouns all together, but don't employ this archaic, confusing grammatical quirk. I'd like to point out to you, ekke's comment was much better understandable and shorter.
Edit: Did you even read what you linked?
> One explanation given for some uses of they referring to a singular antecedent is notional agreement, when the antecedent is seen as semantically plural
F was definitely singular.
> Distributive constructions apply a single idea to multiple members of a group. They are typically marked in English by words like each, every and any.
That is indeed something I often wondered about, sadly that part is inconclusive.
> Referential and non-referential anaphors
I didn't even try to read. That looks like it should be it's own article.
> On the other hand, when the pronoun they was used to refer to known individuals ("referential antecedents, for which the gender was presumably known", e.g my nurse, that truck driver, a runner I knew), reading was slowed when compared with use of a gendered pronoun consistent with the "stereotypic gender" (e.g. he for a specific truck driver).
You might ommit personal pronouns, as I said, or use 'it' on the object of the sentence using passive verbs.
Although you allege ekke's comment was "much better understandable", it commits the same use of they as singular.
> Others follow a simple pattern - if the light is off, and they have never turned it on yet, turn it on. If it is already on, or they have already ever turned it on, do nothing.
"They" cannot possibly be referring to the group---"they" is referring to each person individually.
If it's referring to the others as a group, it's not a solution to the puzzle.
"Others" is not singular. "they" is a reference to individuals out of a group. "they each" is a common disambiguation, but it doesn't actually matter who turns the light on. The generic he was also used, anyway. This "they" is commonly used to refer to groups of only males, too, and has nothing to do with gendering.
You seem to be very angry with a feature of English grammar. Using they/them/their is a perfectly reasonable, consistent and well-understood way to refer in the third person to someone of unknown gender.
How would you rewrite the sentence "If the light is on when F gets to the room, they turn the light off, and they increment their counter." without using they?
I am not angry with a feature of the language. I am angry with the people abusing a bug, for lack of a better word, that makes a simple language overly complicated. I am angry, because I didn't understand the whole comment. In my opinion that is not just my fault. It was, in many ways, terribly written. I think a little meta discussion is beneficial. Seeing that it is a question of logic and we are in a logic puzzle thread, I think, you should try to answer your question yourself.
> consistent
If that was a consistent feature, or better to say regular, there would be the -s inflexion on the verb, that the singular third person requires.
> well-understood
What does that even mean? In the referred article, were, as I said, at least two counts against the particular usage in the GP.
> How would you ...
What does it matter? Are you saying there is no other way? Why don't you give it a try yourself, it's not hard. For starters, just try replacing "they" with "F".
>What does it matter? Are you saying there is no other way? Why don't you give it a try yourself, it's not hard. For starters, just try replacing "they" with "F".
Lol. It does matter because you are bitching about using they when you don't even say what on earth are we supposed to say instead.
Replace they with the name? "If the light is on when Franklin gets to the room, Franklin turns the light off, and Franklin increments his or her counter." Yeah sounds perfectly natural. Pronouns are for losers.
So, my personal ability to rephrase the sentence is attacked, the pretense that there would be no alternatives is kept and my idea is dismissed as petty. That's just as expected.
Note that the above sentence is written in the objective way that I mentioned before. There is no way a third person singular gendered pronoun could creep in there, even if I was talking about you in the third person.
Unless Franklin was a transfinite gender fluid with multiple personalities, the use of they would be wrong there, according to the article you linked.
Yes, your alternative of simply repeating the noun several times instead of using a pronoun, which you avoid using because you feel its gender neutrality is a tool of the "transfinite gender fluid sjw brigade", despite being in use for 600 years now, is a petty solution indeed.
The first sentence of my last comment was what I had called objective. All the while, going by the repeated mentioning of me, ie. "you", the answer I got seemed much more focused on me. Well, I'm very egoistic, going by my mentioning myself so often here, so I'm flattered by your attention, but I suppose you are missing the point.
Who is they???