Following on from my discussion of “singular they” removing gender-specific / binary gender pronouns from your text, did you know that you can ask Word to keep an eye out for gender-specific terms in your document? Here’s how to do it.

We set up different things for the Grammar checker to check in the Options menu:

In Options, choose Proofing:

Scroll down to the section headed When correcting spelling and grammar in Word and click on the Settings button:

Make sure the writing style is set to Grammar Only:

Tick Gender-specific words (and notice there are all sorts of other grammar and style aspects you can ask Word to highlight for you):

In order for Word to actually use this feature, make sure that Check grammar with spelling is ticked:

Click OK until you are back at the original screen.

Back in your Word document…