While visiting my sister at college, I sat on her dormitory terrace and met her friends. One friend, Gregg, is transgender. After Gregg left, I remarked, “He’s funny.” My sister corrected me, explaining that Gregg insisted on being referred to in the third person as “they.” I smirked, thinking he (or they) was joking, but my sister said they was serious.

Initially, Gregg’s crusade to correct English’s lack of a gender-ambiguous pronoun struck me as impractical, even pointless. Surely, I thought, the transgender community faces more important issues.

English, however, has not kept pace with changing social practices. Society is more accepting of the transgender community, but parts of the language are not.

Fighting over a pronoun may seem silly, but the impact is significant. Marginalized groups lacking the words to describe themselves become “invisible,” to borrow Ralph Ellison’s term, unable to properly express their identities.

A similar effort to change the language arose decades ago during the women’s liberation movement when people sought less paternalistic language. “Ms.” entered the vernacular, but “he-she” and “s/he” never caught on to replace “he and she.” Likewise, today, invented gender-neutral pronouns such as “ve,” “xe” and “ze” are not widely used.

“They” is the right choice. It is short and lacks the awkwardness of “he or she.” The word is simply repurposed, overcoming the difficulty individuals have with accepting a new pronoun. Some people already use “they” in the third person to avoid identifying gender. We should accelerate this trend and make it official.

Purists bristle at the thought of tampering with traditional grammar rules. After all, those rules create order and improve communication. For instance, removing the comma in the statement, “Let’s cut and paste, kids” could lead to accidental pediatric dissections.

While grammar rules are important, so is knowing when to break them. In this case, English simply needs a push. Language can evolve quickly. Words such as “emoji” and “tweet” leapt into the dictionary soon after they emerged. Pronouns, though, are just stubborn.

Nouns and verbs multiply, but pronouns can be divisive.

Enthusiasm for “they” as a singular pronoun is growing. The Washington Post Style Guide accepted “they” as a singular pronoun for individuals who do not identify as male or female. The American Dialect Society deemed the singular “they” the 2015 Word of the Year. And Geoffrey Nunberg, a Berkeley linguist, recently advocated for “they” on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air.

Let’s declare that “they” is the new “he or she.” Old-fashioned grammarians, join the movement.