Hi,
Here is the sentence:
If a patient strictly complies with doctor’s advice, (he/she/it) will recover faster.
What word should I use in this case if I don’t know patient’s gender?
Historically, the answer was he.
However with “political correctness,” that seemed sexist to some. That gets us to writing it as “…advice, s/he will recover faster…” this means either she or he.
As a spoken sentence, I would just say “he,” but I’m old. Maybe younger people would say "he or she.’
And what about ‘it’? Is it possible to use it when I refer to words “patient” or “person”?
P.S. What was that thing above???
I’d say “they”.
You mean “If patients…,they will…”?
Who’s that spammer?
Fedorov i would use “it” when referring to people. We do that when referring to some animals or inanimate (not living) objects, but not people. it is insulting to call a person an “it.”
A minor addition is except for a baby.
Yeah, I know that. But let’s take as an example the expression “Who is it? It’s Sam.”
As we can see, there are some exceptions. And I’d really like to know them.