had gained wide support, and many organizations, including most publishers, had issued guidelines on the use of gender-neutral language, but stopped short of recommending they to be third-person singular with a non-indeterminate, singular antecedent. Contemporary usage The use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns in written and spoken language has decreased since the 1970s. In a corpus of spontaneous speech collected in Australia in the 1990s, singular they had become the most frequently used generic pronoun (rather than generic he or he or she). Similarly, a study from 2002 looking at a corpus of American and British newspapers showed a preference for they to be used as a singular epicene pronoun. The increased use of singular they may owe in part to an increasing desire for gender-neutral language. A solution in formal writing has often been to write "he or she", or something similar, but this is often considered awkward or overly politically correct, particularly when used excessively. In 2016, the journal American Speech published a study by Darren K. LaScotte investigating the pronouns used by native English speakers in informal written responses to questions concerning a subject of unspecified gender, finding that 68% of study participants chose singular they to refer to such an antecedent. Some participants noted that they found constructions such as "he or she" inadequate as they do not include people who identify as neither male nor female. They in this context was named Word of the Year for 2019 by Merriam-Webster and for 2015 by the American Dialect Society. On January 4, 2020, the American Dialect Society announced they had crowned they, again in this context, Word of the Decade for the 2010s. Use with a pronoun antecedent The singular antecedent can be a pronoun such as someone, anybody, or everybody, or an interrogative pronoun such as who: With somebody or someone: "I feel that if someone is not doing their job it should be called to their attention." —an American newspaper (1984); quoted by Fowler. With anybody or anyone: "If anyone tells you that America's best days are behind her, then theyre looking the wrong way." President George Bush, 1991 State of the Union Address; quoted by Garner "Anyone can set themselves up as an acupuncturist." —Sarah Lonsdale "Sharp Practice Pricks Reputation of Acupuncture". Observer 15 December 1991, as cited by Garner "If anybody calls, take their name and ask them to call again