Wikipedia: Singular they/Talk

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Wikipedia is not a usage guide! --LMS

But it is an encyclopedia, and mention of "singular they" is relevant to the discussion of English language, and in particular English grammar -- I'm not saying "use the singular they" or "don't use the singular they", I'm just noting it is a phenomena of (at least some people's) English grammar. -- Simon J Kissane

I'm not convinced. You are talking about English usage. There is a lot of encyclopedic information you can give about English usage. The issue about "singular they" is one that belongs (is always treated) in an English language usage guide. --LMS

No, I'm not talking about English usage, at least as I understand it. English usage is prescriptive, "how you should write/speak", while all I'm trying to do is descriptive "how people do in fact write/speak". And it's not just an issue like affect vs. effect -- it can be related to issues such as gender-related language, and also it deals with a rather fundamental part of a language (its grammar, its pronouns). Are you saying that the features of the English language are somehow off-limits for an encyclopedia? I don't think so, especially since its not like we have any space limits here. -- Simon J Kissane

If you'll look at your Fowler, you'll see that very often his guide is prescriptive, but just as often it's descriptive, and a lot of time there is blurring between the two. So, yes, I am absolutely insisting that descriptions of English language usage are off-limits for Wikipedia--except when the issues impinge more or less directly on some issue of interest outside language. (That happens a lot, for example, in philosophy.) --LMS

But why? Why not describe the features of a language? Is it just English, or any language? Why exclude the features of languages from an encyclopedia? Surely they are worthy of mention, not just insofar as they impinge on an issue outside language, but they are worthy of mention in themselves. And there are pages about the usage of other languages, such as Latin (see Latin language/Declension, Latin language/Phrases, Latin language/Lexicon), and to my knowledge you have not complained about any of them. -- Simon J Kissane