Re: [boost] Gender neutral documentation
----Original Message---- From: Angus Leeming [mailto:angus.leeming@btopenworld.com] Sent: 04 November 2005 11:13 To: boost@lists.boost.org Subject: Re: [boost] Gender neutral documentation
Anthony Williams wrote:
The use of "she" implies the person in question is female. Though "he" technically also has the implication that the person is male, it is general usage that "he" is used as a stand in for "he or she". If we really want to be gender neutral, we should write "he or she", which is what we really mean. Sometimes this is abbreviated "s/he", but that's an ugly kludge. Better would be to rewrite the sentence to avoid the issue.
My personal preference is to use "they" as the first person singular gender-neutral pronoun. This will be /intensely/ irritating to grammar purists, but does seem to be the way the language is evolving.
I don't like this, but it is preferable to "she".
We do have a pronoun for just such a usage, albeit one that appears to be used today only by the British royal family. Perhaps it sounds archaic, but one understands what one is talking about when one uses the correct language.
We do. However what one *meant* to write was: One's personal preference is to use "they" as the *THIRD* person singular gender-neutral pronoun. As used by the British royal family, "one" is a first person singular pronoun.
Regards from yet another Brit, :-)
-- Martin Bonner Martin.Bonner@Pitechnology.com Pi Technology, Milton Hall, Ely Road, Milton, Cambridge, CB4 6WZ, ENGLAND Tel: +44 (0)1223 441434
Martin Bonner wrote:
We do have a pronoun for just such a usage, albeit one that appears to be used today only by the British royal family. Perhaps it sounds archaic, but one understands what one is talking about when one uses the correct language.
We do. However what one *meant* to write was:
One's personal preference is to use "they" as the *THIRD* person singular gender-neutral pronoun.
Ok. However, as you have already intimated, that's grammatically incorrect.
As used by the British royal family, "one" is a first person singular pronoun.
Perhaps. I've always felt that the royals refer to themselves in the third person and that it's this that makes them sound a little peculiar. I've always thought as "one" as directly equivalent to the French «on» and the German «man» which are third person pronouns. However, I'm having difficulty thinking of any English examples :) Perhaps I've led us down a blind alley; apologies for that. Returning to the original example: This means for example that the client can completely discard Bind if she does not need it. I'd suggest rewriting it as: This means that the user can discard Bind completely if it is not needed. That would get rid of a split infinitive too, but that's a whole other ball game :) Angus
Returning to the original example: This means for example that the client can completely discard Bind if she does not need it. I'd suggest rewriting it as: This means that the user can discard Bind completely if it is not needed.
This is so much better than using "they." "They" works well in casual conversation, but in documentation I always eventually find myself looking for the plural group it's referring to. The boost maintainers? The user community? My user community? Documentation is difficult enough to read without introducing confusion by substituting pronouns non-grammatically. -- David Cameron University of British Columbia http://bar.psych.ubc.ca/People/Dave.html
participants (3)
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Angus Leeming -
David Cameron -
Martin Bonner