So they say

The New York Times reports that "they/them" is pretty much dead cert to become the gender-neutral 3rd person singular. Again.

It's no surprise that we'll get there soon, and it's not really a surprise that official grammarians are caving.

Rather, the interesting bit is the hidden truth that "they" was pulling double duty before the he/she regime came down in 1745:

This will surprise a few purists, but for centuries the universal pronoun was they. Writers as far back as Chaucer used it for singular and plural, masculine and feminine. Nobody seemed to mind that they, them and their were officially plural. As Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage explains, writers were comfortable using they with an indefinite pronoun like everybody because it suggested a sexless plural.

...many great writers — Byron, Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens, Trollope and more — continued to use they and company as singulars, never mind the grammarians.

I've tried to maintain the singularity of gendered pronouns, but this bulldozer puts me off high-falutin' ground. I'm'a start making the switch. Anybody doesn't like it, they can take it up with Byron.