His/her

[peake]

MKS (aka brisingamen, aka my editor, conscience and all too often my memory) calls to suggest that referring to a generic reviewer in my last long post as 'her' might lead people to think I meant a particular reviewer, and says I should change it to "his/her". Except I hate "his/her" just like I hate all those contractions invented when everyone was trying to

Comments

[pantryslut]

Some people alternate "her" and "him."

[peake]

That is my normal preference, but when you use only one generic pronoun in a piece, it tends not to looks so generic.

[swisstone]

'They'. Perfectly good, non-clumsy generic pronoun. I use it all the time, and will continue to do so.

[ninebelow]

Yes.

[white_hart]

Same here.

[sbisson]

Yes, "they" and "their" is the grammatically correct choice.

[del_c]

There is, but you won't like it: "his".

[redbird]

There's no easy way out of it if you aren't prepared to accept "they" as a non-gendered singular generic and also dislike coined non-gendered pronouns. You can have your standard of grammar and just say "a reviewer" or "the reviewer" each time, but while that's grammatical it can be awkward. Were it never awkward, we'd have far fewer such conversations, because it would be more natural to just keep saying "your doctor/child/neighbor" and not use pronouns.

[handworn]

Reminds me of what one wag suggested:

"he or she, it," abbreviated to h'orsh'it