Agree to disagree?

I'm editing a couple of books in which the authors routinely violate the presumed agreement of subjects and pronouns.

I say "presumed" because it's not a given anymore. How often do you see a construction like this: "If anyone thinks they can get away with this, I have news for them"? My authors don't do this just occasionally, but hundreds of times. It's called "notional" agreement, meaning that if a reader has a general notion of what's meant, it's all right.

And now you expect me to froth at the mouth, right?

Sorry, I'm no longer a member of the Froth Estate. I hate the disagreement, but what are the alternatives?

Historically, the sentence above would read, "If anyone thinks he can get away with this, I have news for him." There was no question that "anyone" was singular and needed a singular pronoun. "He" was taken in this case to be shorthand for "humankind" and to cover both men and women. The push for genderless language (to which I subscribe most of the time) has made this no longer acceptible in polite society.

One can always write: "If anyone thinks he or she can get away with this, I have news for him or her." But that's hopelessly wooden, and simply calls attention to the writer's frantic desire not to be thought sexist. Alternating "he" and "she" for gender balance is only a little less self-conscious.

A book I'm reading uses s/he to get around the problem, hardly an improvement.

Good writers (and editors) can usually reword: "Those who think they can get away with this should think again." But after I've reworded a few hundred times, I get tired of everything being plural. And sometimes a sentence demands a singular. Would you say, "The world's last hermit can do whatever they want"? (And you can't get out of it by saying "he" on the ground that all hermits are male---they aren't.)

So "notional" agreement is gaining ground, and why shouldn't it? Well, for one thing it violates logic and hundreds of years of linguistic history. "They" has been a plural for a long time. It's hard to write "they has been" even with quotation marks to explain that you're thinking singular---"they," the pronoun. But lots of people are managing it these days, and I suspect "they" as a notional singular is here to stay. After all, Chinese ("a lean, mean communicating machine," as a friend puts it) gets by very nicely without endings or special forms to differentiate singular and plural. It's all done with context.

Still, I'm not quite ready to give up and will keep recasting sentences to avoid the problem. I'll use "he or she" occasionally for variety and to stress singularity. If the reference is clearly to a particular man or woman, I'll use whichever pronoun fits. And very rarely, when writing about a solitary hermit (as opposed to other kinds) I may sneak in a masculine pronoun.

Of course, I could follow the suggestion of my friend Sally Hanley and switch over to "she" for all cases, regardless of actual gender. "You guys have had it your way for thousands of years," she says. "Now it's our turn."