Originally Posted by
compressor stall
Mick - There is no "clarity" using a pronoun that can apply to either a single person or multiple people. Reading the sentences as written has me rereading previous sentences to work out to whom the pronouns are referring. Hardly an exercise in clarity or brevity.
There are ways to avoid this abomination resulting from the search for the epicene pronoun. The use of "they" for the third person singular might be increasingly accepted - and I cannot argue with that - but it is lazy and there are alternatives.
Pronouns require an antecedent - the noun that they replace - they don't just sit there on their Pat (or Patricia) Malone. In the report in question for the most part there is only one character - the pilot - and where there are additional characters such as the operator or the trainer the actual noun phrase always immediately precedes the pronoun.
The ATSB has been writing reports this way for what? at least a year, probably longer. I'd hazard a guess that if it wasn't for the fact that they recently started flagging the use of gender-free pronouns in the footnotes no one would be complaining (well, they certainly weren't a year ago).
Addendum.
Near as I can tell the ATSB has been using "
they" and "
their" as singular non-gender pronouns in their reports since at least April 2015 (see AO-2013-136 Final – 7 April 2015; "
The pilot’s logbook indicated that, prior to the flight, they had accrued a total of 2,316 hours helicopter flight time, of which 561 hours were in 412 helicopters."). They have only started drawing attention to this practice by way of a footnote (viz
Gender-free plural pronouns: may be used throughout the report to refer to an individual (i.e. they, them and their).) since May this year.
It's interesting, if not instructive, that for two years readers have been blissfully unaware of, and presumably not confused by, this usage and that the matter seems to have become an issue only after its somewhat well established use was specifically highlighted to readers.