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>He also goes on to say that the grammarians are likely to have their
>way, and that "few good modern writers would flout the grammarians so
>conspicuously."
>
This is true, but the process of acceptance of the construction has
continued since Fowler gave this opinion in 1925. Burchfield, the editor of
the 1996 edition of Fowler's, reflects the much more widespread use of they
and its derivatives to refer to singular nouns and pronouns when he says
that now, such constructions are hardly even noticed, except by traditional
grammarians (note the adjective), and that the process of acceptance seems
irreversible.
