English pronouns in problem statements

Revision en1, by dalex, 2017-05-31 16:27:13

I've just met a comment with a link to a problem statement. There was such text in the statement:

Soon the professor realized that reconstructing Anatoly’s code and the test tree from his output was not a simple task and that the result might be ambiguous. You will have to help her find all possible reconstructions of Anatoly’s code.

Don't you see something weird here? I think it should be:

Soon the professor realized that reconstructing Anatoly’s code and the test tree from his output was not a simple task and that the result might be ambiguous. You will have to help him find all possible reconstructions of Anatoly’s code.

or:

Soon the professor realized that reconstructing Anatoly’s code and the test tree from his output was not a simple task and that the result might be ambiguous. You will have to help them find all possible reconstructions of Anatoly’s code.

I know that people either use the gender that is more common for a person, e.g. he for drivers and she for nurses, or just use they (my English teacher said they is correct). I've wandered across Wikipedia (here is one of the links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_personal_pronouns#Use_of_he.2C_she_and_it), but haven't found anything about preferrable usage of female pronouns.

However, I've read really a lot of English statements, and everywhere the female pronouns are used! For children and professors, for drivers and miners, for rabbits and foxes, for everything and everyone. Why?

Tags english, statements, grammar

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  Rev. Lang. By When Δ Comment
en1 English dalex 2017-05-31 16:27:13 1634 Initial revision (published)