Forget political correctness. Using needlessly gender-bound pronouns is simply bad writing, as is ostentatiously randomizing pronouns. You are not a better writer than Conrad, or Jane Austen. Both would tell you: English has a singular gender-neutral pronoun; it's "they".
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Forget political correctness. Using needlessly gender-bound pronouns is simply bad writing, as is ostentatiously randomizing pronouns. You are not a better writer than Conrad, or Jane Austen. Both would tell you: English has a singular gender-neutral pronoun; it's "they".
Or many writers would tell you that English has always had a default unmarked third-person singular pronoun, namely "he" for animate referents.