It is common nowadays to write 'they' instead of 'he or she'. In the past 'he' served for 'he or she'. Law students learning interpretation of legal documents and statutes were taught 'Unless the context otherwise requires the male always embraces the female'. So what may we write for 'Imagine a case where the petitioner set himself or herself up' ? Do we write 'set themself'? ( Now there's an idea !)Do we write 'set themselves'? Do we still write 'set himself'?
The problem is that we use 'they', originally always plural,as singular. As an article in the (London) Spectator notes we have long abandoned 'thou'in favour of 'you', so using one form for singular and plural of the second person. So has the time for 'themself' come ?

Although I am guilty as charged I certainly hope that this barbarism does not become part of correct grammar.
Yes, it has become quite common. I suppose it is one solution to the problem of how to be politically correct in regard to unspecified gender.
Convenient, and I use it colloquially; but not correct for formal writing (IMHO).

(As for "you" referring to either singular or plural, we in the South US have a solution to end confusion: "Y'all"! )

'Themself' has, in a sense, already HAD its day, since it was the standard form until 'themselves' replaced it in the middle of the 16th century. There is some suggestion that - in these politically-correct days - it is creeping back into use, though it's far from 'standard' yet. (Anything that helps in the battle against structures such as 's/he', for example, has got to be a good thing.)

i also find this form stupid, nonsensical, and stemming from simple laziness.
whatever happened to using "one". i would like to see that resurrected, personally.

Yeah, Hassia, but Fred's example is a very tricky one:

(1) Imagine a case where the petitioner set himself or herself up.

It would hardly do to replace the phrase "himself or herself" with "oneself," since "oneself" can't have "petitioner" as antecedent. It would also hardly do to write

(2) Imagine a case where one set oneself up

since I'm sure the role of one as petitioner is crucial to the the example. This suggests perhaps

(3) Imagine a case where one, as petitioner, set oneself up,

which may be unobjectionable grammatically, but is if anything even worse than (1) on the tiresomeness scale.

I'm happy that TIE brought up the subject of the Southern use the plural pronoun y'all. Southerners are sometimes made fun of in this country for that usage, but I, for one, wish we could make something like it standard. It certainly sounds a lot better than what people often say where I come from: youse, or even worse, youse guys.

Plus, (3) in the example given by Maiku strongly suggests to me that the writer is writing and thinking personally. It is not then some legal question about some other theoretical petitioner . It suggests that the writer or speaker is the petitioner thinking to set himself (or herself/ themself/ themselves ) up.
This use of 'one' is so common among certain English people that when they go into therapy the counsellor spends a lot of time persuading them to say 'I' and 'me'instead of talking about themselves in terms suggesting the third person ( 'Well, one doesn't like to complain but....' ). It belongs in the upper-middle class and the aristocracy; everyone else regards it with no more than mild amusement rather than as some social marker ( one likes to think so, anyway ).
Lawyers here have the more disconcerting habit of saying 'I' or 'we' when they mean 'my client'. It is quite a surprise to be told suddenly by a senior one 'I am an elderly, senile man who has been defrauded' when he appears so normal and has just drafted one's will !

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 06-13-03 at 11:08 AM.]

I've often suspected that some of you Brits were using the pronoun one in place of I, and your latest confirms it, Fred.

We colonials do not seem to be in need of the particular kind of therapy you mention above, since we nearly always say "I" to refer to ourselves and "one" to refer to somebody else (there are some exceptions, where one might slyly mean to include oneself in the class of possible referents for "one.") And then there is the case of Bob Dole, who made a habit out of referring to himself as "Bob Dole" in his run for the U.S. presidency.

A related problem may be the advice so often given here by composition teachers to young writers: avoid at all costs the pronoun "I." Misunderstanding that this advice is meant to encourage writers to take a larger, more objective view of their subjects, generations of college freshman learn to write stuff like "in the opinion of this writer."

Now that's even worse than the "one" you report as being used in place of "I" by your aristocrats over there. You know, I'm sure, that we don't have any aristocrats in America, so we don't suffer much from that particular speech pathology. But of course we have enough of our own.