On Gender-Inclusive Language

When the Collins Dictionary linguists used their computational analysis to query their database on language use (4.4 billion words!), they discovered that evangelicals are using "man" to refer to the human race far more often than the general population. As in three or four times more often.

Douglas J. Moo said in his report to the Evangelical Theological Society at the San Diego 50th anniversary dinner for the NIV translation, "What determines 'correct' English is not some nineteenth or twentieth-century style manual or the English we were taught in grade school but the English that people are actually speaking and writing today. And the data are very clear: modern English has latched on to the so-called 'singular they,' which has been part of English for a long time, as the preferred way to follow up generic nouns and pronouns." That means, despite what our English teachers taught us, that someone can take their toys and go home. In fact, if we say someone can take his toys and go home, listeners notice—and not in a good way.