Back in the days before Yale’s freshmen became “first-years,” one of my freshman advisees was a gay man who translated Tang Dynasty poetry; planned to learn Portuguese in order to read Clarice ...

SPRINGFIELD — Merriam-Webster has added definitions of “they” and “themself” as singular, gender-neutral pronouns to its online dictionary, throwing the weight of the 180-year-old dictionary behind ...

Collective nouns such as "them" take the singular if they are acting as a unit and the plural if they are acting as individuals. Ex: The team (as individuals) decide today if they want to strike. The ...

There are two stated reasons why the Associated Press has rewritten its — its, not their — much-vaunted stylebook to allow for “they” instead of “it”: The first is stupid — that pretty much everyone ...

Two weeks ago, we started the series on word classes. And last week, we delved into report writing. I thought it would be useful to intersperse the series, so we go back to word classes this week. We ...