Re: His/Her v. Their

[Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net>]

I tend to avoid the pronoun reference and say who I am writing about.  
When I refer to the audience, I imply "you" but do not state "you."  
Previous discussions on this list raised many valid arguments in favor 
and against, but none of those arguments swayed me to use "you" in 
documentation.  When I refer to a third person, I use the label of that 
person, like "user," "administrator," "client," etc.  I have never found 
an argument for using "their" as a reference to a person in a formal 
document that I liked.

I find the use of "they" to be awkward but I also find that the sentence 
that results can lead to ambiguity if it is read out of context.  I like 
my sentences to be clear when read without the context provided by other 
sentences in a passage.


On 10/26/2012 7:08 AM, Becca wrote: