Wear a glove on participants' right hand or hands?

Question

I am writing a methods section of a research paper.

"Participants wore the glove on their right hand."

Here I'm confused whether I should say hand or hands, because 1) no one has two right hands, but 2) the total number of right hands = the number of participants > 1.

What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/212139/they-shook-their-heads-or-they-shook-their-head https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12750/our-bodies-or-our-bodys and several other questions. But either is OK. — Stuart F, Oct 29 '23 at 10:52
"Each of the participants wore the glove on their right hand." — Greybeard, Oct 29 '23 at 10:56
Perhaps the most thorough treatment of the distributive singular and the distributive plural, including looking at cases where both are available or one is to be preferred, is at Everybody's using a cell phone nowadays vs Everybody's using cell phones nowadays. — Edwin Ashworth, Oct 29 '23 at 16:02

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '23 at 11:04

The sentence is going to make more sense changed slightly.

'Every participant wore a glove on his/her (PC) or their -if one prefers - hand'.

Or 'each participant wore a glove on the right hand'.

Or 'the right hand of each participant sported (was covered by) a glove'.

Sometimes (often?) it's easier to change the sentence to accommodate the picture than it is to try to follow some 'rule', which may/not be apposite anyway.

Wear a glove on participants' right hand or hands?

1 Answers1