I'm all for good documentation, but in this case, aren't we really fussing over 'pointless' details? This is documentation written for programmers, so whilst grammar is important in getting your point across clearly it seems to be irrelevant in this case. I know that I for one am not going to stress over the use of 'his' vs 'their' vs 'his or her' etc when what I'm REALLY interested in is the actual information about the library I'm trying to use. On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Hal Finkel <half@halssoftware.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2011-04-13 at 12:34 +0100, Daniel James wrote:
On 13 April 2011 12:25, Gordon Woodhull <gordon@woodhull.com> wrote:
I stand by avoiding gendered pronouns when referring to users in
documentation, but it's up to individual taste. No "its" though. ;-)
Just say, "talks to the user in their language". Here's a discussion at a more appropriate forum:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48/gender-neutral-pronoun
Please don't do that. As noted on the stackexchange page, '"singular they" also enjoys a long history of criticism', and it certainly sounds wrong to me. It is correct, albeit a bit verbose, to use 'his or her', and if you don't wish to choose one gender over another, then please use both genders in that way. [My wife was a newspaper copyeditor for some time, and after having my grammar corrected for years, now I'm doing it to other people, scary...]
-Hal
_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost