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Akcium

!! Thank you for this detail.

The problem is that I'm not native speaker. Could you tell me, if it's correct to say, e.g.

"If the user wants to do this, they will do this"

I mean, if I need to use a single, not plural, how to properly refer to ... him/her?

I put him all the time because "a user" in Russian language has a gender, while in English it doesn't have a gender.

I'm always confused about this.

For example, "Imagine you have a user who wants to sign up. After (___) sings up"?

Please, give me advice here, this is really a problem =(

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Thanks for doing/sharing this. It's a great resource.

And yes, it's absolutely correct to go with "...they will do this" when referring to a hypothetical genderless user. Defaulting to 'he/him' (and presuming a gender) is less and less acceptable.

>"Imagine you have a user who wants to sign up. After (___) sings up"?

"After they sign up, ..." works there and can be used to refer to the singular person. Just make sure the verbs agree ('they sign' vs 'she signs').

One other thing I'd note: you'll almost never hear a native English speaker use the phrase "fill the form".

Now, whether a person opts for 'fill in' vs 'fill out' is another question and seems to vary by english region.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/fill-out-a-...

Every language has its quirks. "They" works in this case, at least in english. You can say "After they sign up". You can also say "After the user signs up", just beware the repetition.

In portuguese, "the user" has a gender as well ("o usuário" i.e. "(the male) user"). We usually ignore linguistic gender in most places, which causes all sorts of confusion to people coming from countries where nouns are "un-gendered".

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48/is-there-a-co...

You can use "they" as a singular pronoun.

You can use "one" like: "if one wants to do this, one will do this."

You can use "his or her" like: "if the user wants to do this, he or she will do this."

Some writers like to rotate "he" and "she". So sometimes they write "if the user wants to do this, he has to do this first." Then later, in another paragraph, the writers write, "The user doesn't like this widget. She prefers that widget."

And "they" uses singular verbs, for the most part.

"If the user wants"

but

"If they want"

"They" has been used as a singular since the 1300s. Example: "a person knocked on the door, but I missed them. Do you know what they wanted?"

"If the user wants to do this, they will do this" - perfectly acceptable. "They" and "them", can be plural and singular.

Never knew! This sounds weird for me, because teachers taught us that they/them used only for plural.

Superb, thank you!

I am a native English speaker and they/them being used in this way has become more accepted and recommended over time. I was taught explicitly not to do this when I was in school, but that was a few decades ago. Using he/him when gender is unknown or unimportant is regarded as exclusionary. Usually, it'a not an issue, but I find it does sometimes make things more difficult to parse or understand without additional context. In this case, there aren't really any drawbacks.

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