Vs everybody likes their own child. · their can have a distributive meaning, so most of the employees prefer to eat their lunch at their desk is the preferred construction. · they were hunkered down in their hotel room, where they have been moved to a higher floor. Its could also refer to the models particular size and other conditions, rather than those of the institution. Everyone has their own story means each person has his or her own story while everyone has their own stories means each person has many stories. an individual person can have many things, and a group can collectively have one thing, so the object doesnt have to match the subject: However,in the text preceding the sentence, there may be a group of people with lives, then 2. · 6 while others have correctly identified what the they/their refer to in a strict sense, a literal reading of the referents misses some subtleties in the rhetorical structure. Sometimes i get frustrated, because i do not see their difference. Or the houses minority makes their voices heard. Of or belonging to people, animals or things that have already been mentioned or are easily identified used instead of his or her to refer to a person whose sex is not mentioned or … This the first time i have heard the verb to hunker down. There is one exception relating to their, for which the oxford dictionary defines two usages: Everybody likes his or her own child. Are both of these sentences natural to a native speaker? The repetition of their children (and the associated switch in who their refers to) is likely deliberate. The houses minority makes its voices heard. Their has an odd clumping effect as you intuit. · for clarity and flow i would use the institutions in place of either its or their. I looked it up and learn the meaning and checked the example sentences. · without context, their refers to no one which is singular, the choose 1. · the general rule is that, when talking about things, you use its for singular and their for plural. However, what caught my attention is that it seems to have both active and passive meaning without changing anything. · what is the difference between their and theirs, and how is should use them? · for example, which sentence is correct? I want to mean the same thing in both of them. · both are correct, depending on what you mean to say.