In writing business documents, I often have to write about a generic customer of unknown gender, and so I have sentences like:
"If in doubt of x, the staff member should consult his/her manager. (S)he should continue once the task has been clarified."
If find the his/her/(s)he stuff very clumsy and distracting for the reader - I'm tempted to write something like this instead:
"If in doubt of x, the staff member should consult their manager. They should continue once the task has been clarified."
It's obviously grammatically incorrect, but seems to be the way one might say it informally.
How good/bad is it to use "they/their" as a singular in business writing?
2006-12-05
23:41:36
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6 answers
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asked by
Anonymous
in
Words & Wordplay