The push for gender-inclusive words has given us some tortuous neo-pronouns, such as “s/he,” which often turns up in academic writing. A more common trend has been to use the possessive form of the third-person pronoun they – i.e., their – in the first person. The purpose is to avoid using his or her–or more specifically, to avoid using only his his when the subject is not gender specific. A grating example of it appears in today’s Detroit News:

The feel a big man has for their position on the floor was completely altered.

Doesn’t the News employ copy editors? It’s bad enough when the subject and the possessive pronoun don’t agree–it’s even worse when the subject really is gender-specific but the possessive pronoun isn’t, because somebody has fallen into an ungrammatical, sloppy habit.

A simple solution that usually works, by the way, which is to make everything plural, such as:

The feel big players have for their position on the floor was completely altered.