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Why do we use their instead of his in this sentence?

another driver flashes their lights

RegDwigнt
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Paschalis
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1 Answers1

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Using their in this context suggests that you don't actually know the gender of the driver. If you used his, it would suggest that the driver is male. If you know that the driver is male, then it would be OK to use his.

RegDwigнt
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FrustratedWithFormsDesigner
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  • Cool! So, I can use this everywhere? I mean, when writing a report, I can always say eg "user", and refer to him/her as "their" ? eg user turn off their devices – Paschalis Oct 04 '13 at 18:22
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    @pasq: That's a slightly more complicated question, see here: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-there-a-correct-gender-neutral-singular-pronoun-his-versus-her-versus – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Oct 04 '13 at 18:28
  • For the most part, you’re right that it means the gender is unspecified. However, there are documented cases where the gender is completely deterministic, but the speaker wished to create some notional distance between the speaker and the person spoken of. – tchrist Oct 04 '13 at 23:25