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I have always problem with finding a suitable sentence to avoid a gender dependent pronoun. I know I can use "they" or "their", but if there were other options to totally omit them, I would prefer them.

For example I wrote:

The user can utilize this information to create appropriate rules to identify his items of interest.

Can I here say "the items of interest"?

Are they other options? In general?

Ahmad
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  • In this case, just omit the pronoun. They are not going to be anyone else's items of interest are they? You won't always be able to circumvent this hoary old problem. If you try, you'll end up like Don Quixote -- tilting at windmills. – Mick Oct 29 '16 at 17:45
  • @Mick thanks, you mean "the items of interest" with "the" right? – Ahmad Oct 29 '16 at 17:52
  • Absolutely not. No way. Nada! – Mick Oct 29 '16 at 17:54
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    The items of interest don't have to belong to anyone, so you can just say "identify items of interest." I don't know why you can do it, but you can. We need a tame grammarian to tell us why. Maybe one will happen by presently. – Mick Oct 29 '16 at 18:00
  • @Mick it seems you mean "zero article" rule. – Ahmad Oct 29 '16 at 18:04
  • Possibly. You do realise that you may know more about English grammar than I do? I had my last English lesson half a century ago. Since then, it has just been "on the job" training -- the university of life, as they say. – Mick Oct 29 '16 at 18:07
  • @Mick Maybe, however articles are one of the difficult parts of English. It's interesting you know in Persian we don't have any gender-specific pronoun ( we don't discriminate them : ) ). Moreover we don't have a definite article. If something doesn't have indefinite articles (something like "a" in English before it or a postfix "i") is definite or a generic term. – Ahmad Oct 29 '16 at 18:18

1 Answers1

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There are some writers who use

(s)he

to indicate the subjective third person instead of either he or she, and

hir

may also be used in place of the objective or possessive him/his and her to be gender neutral.

Peter
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