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Victoria Whitehorne is <<... having a debate with a co-worker (also a
technical writer) about which pronoun to use when "user" as the antecendent
and the gender is unknown. He always uses a plural pronoun. For example:
"If the user is ...then customize their session." I think this is
technically incorrect but I am seeing it more and more.>>
It's actually correct both technically (traditional grammar) and
nontechnically (modern pronoun usage); "their" has a long history as both a
singular and a plural pronoun, even though it's more familiar to us in the
plural form. However, you can resolve the seeming error simply enough by
making the subject and the verb plural: "If users are... then customize
their..." The only case where this might be a problem is where you might
confuse readers into thinking that there are several users being referred to
in a step. Context should generally make it clear that this isn't the case.
<<My solution would be: "If the user is ...then customize the session.">>
That could also work just fine. One problem with this approach and my
proposed solutions above is that they rely too heavily on forms of "to be",
which often has the effect of making the writing leaden and longer than
necessary. There are a variety of workarounds, including: "For [description]
users, customize the session as follows..."
<<"If the user is ...then customize his/her session.">>
Avoid his/her constructions. Although they work well enough for a single
sentence (if you don't object to the /, and many editors do), repeating the
pair of words dozens of times per page rapidly becomes annoying; it's also
far longer than necessary. Use the suggestions earlier in this note to come
up with better solutions.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse [Woman Happily Overcoming Repulsive
E-mailfiltering]. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has
pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle
their pockets for new vocabulary."-- James D. Nicoll
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