What is grammatically wrong with this sentence? "A person needs to submit their homework on time."
A person is singular.
The pronoun their is plural, although it refers to a singular antecedent. What word should you use instead of their?
The grammatical issue with the sentence "A person needs to submit their homework on time" is the use of the pronoun "their" to refer to the singular noun "a person." Using "their" is a plural pronoun and doesn't agree with the singular noun. To make the sentence grammatically correct, you should use a singular pronoun such as "his" or "her."
Here's how you can explain it to someone:
To determine what is grammatically incorrect with the sentence, you need to identify the pronoun that is being used incorrectly. In this case, the pronoun "their" is the culprit. To check whether the pronoun agrees with the noun it refers to, you should consider its number.
In the sentence, the noun "a person" is singular, and typically, a singular noun is associated with a singular pronoun. However, "their" is a plural pronoun. To fix this, you could replace "their" with the appropriate singular pronoun, such as "his" or "her."
So, the corrected sentence would be: "A person needs to submit his/her homework on time."