The publication has been prepared by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and the Government Legal Department.

The guide recommends avoiding gendered nouns, both pronouns and ordinary nouns and suggests a number of techniques to do this.

The noun can simply be repeated, thereby avoiding the use of a pronoun, or semantically singular ‘they’ can be used. While prescriptivist grammarians claim this is ungrammatical, its use is attested to in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Wilde and many other eminent writers.

The guide also suggests the use of the passive voice to avoid including a pronoun.

For example, “explaining why the regulations have not been laid” can be used instead of “explaining why he has not laid the regulations”.

Elsewhere it suggests the use of determinatives ‘this’ or ‘that’ in place of genitive pronouns ‘his’ or ‘her’. For example, “the reasonableness or otherwise of that belief” instead of “her belief”.