One of the most significant changes taking place in English is the rejection of the way that 'man' was assumed to include 'woman'. Most of us want our writing to be friendly and inclusive. How can we avoid using 'man', 'he', and 'his'?

The problem most commonly arises when referring to a singular subject. For example,

If a student is late in enrolling, he must pay an additional fee.

Many people use the pronouns 'they' or 'their' instead of 'he', but a plural pronoun ('they') with a singular subject ('student') is considered by some to be bad grammar. (See "Gender menders", below.)

The easiest solution is to make the subject plural if at all possible:

If students are late in enrolling, they must pay an additional fee.

However, the context may rule this option out. If you have to keep the singular, you could use a defining clause:

A student who is late in enrolling must pay an additional fee.

Depending on the context, you may even be able to drop the possessive pronoun:

Assess the patient. Take temperature, respiration and pulse.

If all of these fail, you can use 'he or she' and 'his or her'. This is grammatically correct and therefore perfectly acceptable. In fact, there are times when you simply can't avoid it. However, overuse of this type of construction can make the text tedious. It should, therefore, be used as a last resort.

Gender menders: second thoughts on the topic of avoiding sexist language

Ouch! Or, rather, excuse us. Right Words has had a gentle rap on the knuckles in the form of an e-mail from a nice man with the rather Bunyan-like name of Henry Churchyard. Henry had read the above argument and pointed us to the web site www.pemberley.com.

An "anti-pedantry page" on the site, delightfully titled "Jane Austen and other famous authors violate what everyone learned in their English class", gives a whole bunch of linguistic and literary arguments in support of the use of 'their'. Apparently, it dates back to the late 1300s and happily existed alongside the generic masculine until the late eighteenth century, when, for dubious reasons, it came under attack from grammarians. Even then, it continued to be used by a number of respectable writers, Jane Austen among them.

This information gave Right Words food for thought. Some of us had been feeling ambivalent on the matter anyway, and there had been mild dissension in the ranks in the past. So there could have been a bun-fight, but the their-haters capitulated.

So, instead of:
If a student is late in enrolling, he must pay an additional fee.
we could now say:
If students are late in enrolling, they must pay an additional fee.
or
A student who is late in enrolling must pay an additional fee.
or
If a student is late in enrolling, they must pay an additional fee.

We still prefer the first two - simply because extending the plural form to the singular is a loss of precision, and could be ambiguous in the presence of other plural pronouns or nouns.

Employees must complete a timesheet each day, but the supervisor can submit their records weekly. (And could - or would - you say: Workers can pass on responsibility, but the boss must deal with their problems themselves?)

So that's it: we can use 'their'. But only when we really need it, mind. And with care.

Thanks, Henry.