his

> his/her
The third personal masculine pronoun when used to indicate possession, as in "He has hurt his leg", "The boy has taken his books home" and "Where has your father left his tools?" Traditionally his was used to refer not only to masculine nouns, such as "man", "boy", etc, but to what are known as nouns "of dual gender". These include "architect", "artist", "parent", "passenger", "pupil" and "student". Without further information from the context it is not possible for the speaker or the writer to know the sex of the person referred to by one of these words. Formerly it was considered acceptable to use his in such situations, as in "Every pupil has to supply his own sports equipment" and "Every passenger is responsible for his own luggage". In modern usage this is now considered sexist and there is a modern convention that "his/her" should be used instead to avoid sexism, as in "Every pupil has to supply his/her own sports equipment" and "Every passenger is responsible for his/her own luggage". This convention is felt by some people to be clumsy, particularly when used in spoken or informal written English. Some people prefer to be ungrammatical and use the plural personal pronoun "their", as in "Every pupil must supply their own sports equipment" and "Every passenger is to be responsible for their own luggage". In some situations it is possible to avoid being sexist, clumsy and ungrammatical by rephrasing the sentence, as in "All pupils must supply their own sports equipment" and "All passengers are to be responsible for their own luggage.