Gender pronouns in essays

ucbalumnus
Sat, 03 Nov 2018 01:03:37 +0000

Multiple choice quiz:

When a writer chooses a pronoun to reference a person of unknown gender, ____ may be making a possibly unintended political statement.

A. s/he
B. they
C. she
D. he
E. it

The “correct” answer depends on the admissions readers.

But yes, writing around it as mentioned in reply #2 can avoid having to guess what an admissions reader will see as “correct”:

When writers choose pronouns to reference a person of unknown gender, they may be making possibly unintended political statements.