English Toolkit

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8.2Inconsistency of gender
TYPICAL ERROR The horse was missing and his owner thought it must have been stolen.
CORRECTION The horse was missing and his owner thought he must have been stolen.

EXPLANATION It does not matter whether an animal is referred to by its actual gender (as a he or a she) or as an it. To be logical, the writer should choose one method of referring to an animal and keep to that method. The sample sentence above refers to 'his owner' and then refers to the horse as an it. The sentence could be corrected either by changing it to he or by changing his to its.

While the convention of using pronouns of female gender for ships, planes, other sorts of vehicles and countries is being used less and less nowadays, if pronouns of female gender are used, the same logic applies to them: they need to be used consistently.

Change these passages so that the gender of pronouns is consistent.
aMy dog is a labrador. He is a really friendly dog. When we arrive home, is so excited that he can hardly wait for us to get out of the car.
bWhen she sailed into Sydney Harbour, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was surrounded by a flotilla of small craft. was destined to become a floating luxury hotel in Dubai.
cThere are many different sorts of dragons in the Harry Potter books. The Chinese Fireball is a species of dragon native to China. It is also known as the Lion Dragon, red with a fringe of golden spikes around its face. The Common Welsh Green is a species of dragon native to Wales. The notorious Ilfacrombe Incident is caused by a Welsh Green dragon, when attacks some muggles sunbathing on a beach.
dAfter giving birth to her calf, a Humpback whale is in no hurry to head south again. Instead, allows the calf time to play and to socialize with other calves. Also, she spends a great deal of energy teaching the calf to breach, lob-tail, pectoral-slap and head-lunge.
eGodzilla is an enormous, destructive, prehistoric sea monster in Japanese mythology. According to that mythology, it was awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. It has faced both other monsters, such as the three-headed dragon King Ghidorah, and humans; but is sometimes assisted by allies, such as Rodan, Mothra and Anguirus.
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