RE: His/Her v. Their

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Becca wrote:
 
> Some documents I'm editing of necessity give procedures in third person
> rather than the assumed (you) second person. There's no way around
> this.

Occasionally, it's appropriate to describe to the reader what someone else needs to do. But I'm highly skeptical that a whole set of documents "of necessity" describes all procedures in the third person. 
 
> In the document I'm editing, they use His/Her. My inclination is to use
> "their" - comments?

When I have to describe to the reader the actions of a third person, I avoid possessive pronouns entirely. Or use the plural noun and pronoun. 

"The operator sets the default widget options." 
"End users can customize their widget options."


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
------






^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Writer Tip: You have more time to author content with Doc-To-Help, because your project can be up and running in 3 steps.

See the “Getting Started with Doc-To-Help” blog post. http://bit.ly/doc-to-help-3-steps
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com


Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.

Looking for articles on Technical Communications?  Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.com

Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions?  Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives