Harvard Students: Writing Issue! Help!

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
1

<p>Wikipedia defines dermatophagia as “an obsessive-compulsive disorder wherein a sufferer compulsively bites their own skin.” </p>

<p>I notice that there’s an SAT error here: “their” is not a proper pronoun for its antecedent “sufferer.” But would it really sound better with “his or her” instead? The awkwardness is more apparent in examples in which the pronoun needs to be used more than once; I just can’t get myself, in my own writing, to type “his or her” and “he or she” over and over again.</p>

<p>Sometimes, when I feel like I have to write “he or she,” I’m tempted to just write “he” to make the sentence sound smoother. What do you think about this? Is it “sexist”?</p>

<p>Any thoughts? How do you guys overcome or circumvent this problem? Is “their” ever acceptable?</p>

2

<p>^you’ve got to be kidding.</p>

3

<p>If you’re really worried about using “their” and being politically correct, then just use “her” instead of “his/her.”</p>

4

<p>no, just use “his” to show you aren’t afraid of PC feminists.</p>

5

<p>When in doubt, go for the universal “one.” </p>

<p>i.e. “an obsessive-compulsive disorder wherein one compulsively bites one’s own skin.” </p>

<p>It’s still not as fluid as you might like, and thus you might want to edit the above definition a bit depending on the context, but at least it’s better than, say, “his or her,” and you don’t run the risk of offending any overly-prudish people.</p>

6

<p>Grammar no longer matters. Harvard is the land beyond grammar.</p>

<p>Seriously. TFs will edit your essays for content, and couldn’t care less about sentence structure.</p>