Here is an excerpt from an email I just received regarding applying for a teaching assistant position at the law school:
* refrain from dating or close personal relationships with students in his/her section.
What's a good way to phrase that without pronouns? "A teaching assistant should refrain from a relationship with students in the section that teaching assistant is assigned to"?
Yeah...I guess that sounds better.
It already avoids using specific pronouns, so I'd say no big deal.
The easiest way to avoid a pronoun there, though, is to make the whole thing plural. "Teaching assistants should refrain from relationships with students in the sections that they are teaching."
Note that I'm not pluralizing just the pronoun (his->their), that's bad grammar. I'm pluralizing the whole thing.
I always learned "his/her" was an awkward construct and using only "his" was acceptable practice.
I was pondering how to refer to transvestites using pronouns, and I think I figured out an objective way to do it! I'll use the appropriate pronoun based on what the transvestite's driver license has listed under sex. That's what the legal system says, so I'll go with it.
I agree that using "his/her" is awkward, but I don't like changing it to "his". Some might say it's right, but some don't, so I wouldn't do it. Instead, rephrase it, use plural, and, only if you're totally stuck, use "his/her".
