What Is the Most Commonly Used Gender-Neutral Singular Pronoun in Formal

question 22

Essay

What is the most commonly used gender-neutral singular pronoun in formal writing? What gender-neutral singular pronoun would linguists and editors like to see instead and what reasons do they give for preferring that word? Which do you prefer and why?

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Definitions:

Normally Distributed

Describes a distribution of data that forms a bell-shaped curve, symmetrical about its mean, implying that mean, median, and mode are equal.

Weight Loss

The reduction of total body mass due to efforts to improve fitness and health, or to change appearance through slimming.

Standard Normal

A normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one, commonly used in probability theory and statistics.

Random Variable

A variable whose values are outcomes of a random phenomenon and are subject to variability, characterized by a distribution.