4
votes
5answers
400 views

Using “she” with gender-neutral nouns

The song “Frozen” from Madonna’s Ray of Light (1998) contains the lyrics: Love is a bird, she needs to fly, Let all the hurt inside of you die. Does she refer to bird or love? And why is it ...
0
votes
2answers
106 views

Why are “player”, “researcher” and “designer” referred to by a feminine gender specific pronoun? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Can the feminine pronouns be gender-neutral? Reason for the current trend to use "she" as the gender-neutral pronoun? In a lot of academic literature that I'm reading ...
1
vote
0answers
164 views

How to take the gender of an anonymous person into consideration? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Gender neutral pronoun Very often, I find myself writing about a user, an anonymous person whose gender I don't know. Right after mentioning this abstract user, I need ...
14
votes
4answers
639 views

Advice for using multiple same-gender personal pronouns in the same sentence

I have often struggled with sentences that contain two characters of the same gender. For example, if there are two females, Alice and Carol, then the following sentence can be confusing. Alice ...
1
vote
0answers
241 views

Is “ship” a feminine word? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Is it a good practice to refer to countries, ships etc using the feminine form? My English teacher asked me which third-person personal pronoun is used for the word ...
26
votes
6answers
19k views

Is it correct to use “their” instead of “his or her”?

Is this sentence grammatically correct? Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in their bookcase. or should it be: Anyone who loves the English language should ...