At the moment I’m about half way through my Open University Ethnography course and throughout the study material they always use the possessive adjective, ‘her or his’ instead of ‘his or her’, which incidentally should be replaced by ‘their’ in order to avoid any suggestion of sexism – which is fine by me. Now my spelling and grammar is distinctively average, so I’m not preaching about being grammatically correct. But when political correctness starts making the English language sound ugly I get annoyed. Try reading or writing a sentence using ‘her or his’ in it. It just sounds and feels weird.
"A student studying for their first degree". Sounds normal to me
"A student studying for his or her first degree". Sounds a bit too formal
"A student studying for her or his first degree". Sounds like a man hating, bra burning women wants to make a point.
I’m all for moving away from sexist or discriminative language, but please get a grip.
