They are = They're... when?
When is it NOT appropriate to use the combined words of "they" and "are"? (e.g., They're)
Is there a grammatical rule to only refer to people or can it also refer to things?
Referring to printed paper forms: "They're in the back office."
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1 answer
Some style guides consider contractions to be informal, and therefore would not be used in certain contexts.
Beyond that, there's no grammatical restraint, either on they are vs. they're or the referent of the pronoun they. They is the plural pronoun for both he/she and it.
So "They are in the back room" can refer to two or more people or two or more objects. (I would not, however, mix them. If you have a woman in the back room who is holding a bunch of printed forms, you would say "She has them in the back room.")
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