TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Because in this case we are discussing individuals, not generic persons.
Every language in my limited experience uses a single (and singular) pronoun
to identify a generic person, and that pronoun is almost universally in the
masculine gender. English doesn't even _have_ gender except as implied by
sex. We _do_ have a sex-neutral pronoun, one, that serves the purpose as
well as he, but it sounds stuffy and false. Finding a sex-neutral pronoun in
English is a bit like trying to find a rhyme for silver or orange.
I know many women dislike this situation, but nobody has come up with a
satisfactory solution to the perceived problem, which is more in the
perception than in the objective reality, namely the nature of natural (as
opposed to invented) language. The real problem is confusion of sex with
gender. In German, for example, a young girl, maedchen, is neuter and a
butterfly, schmetterlink, is masculine; whereas in Spanish, both (muchacha
or chica and mariposa, respectively) are feminine. These rules hold even
when one is discussing in these languages male or female butterflies
generically.
The proposed changes have been to use male and female pronouns alternately
(by occurrence, sentence, paragraph, or chapter), to use they as singular,
to use one, or to use a coined pronoun. None of these dogs hunt. The first
is jarring in terms of what the reader expects, the second adds the
confusion of a pronoun that disagrees in number with its verb or antecedent,
and the last has never caught on. Only the last makes sense linguistically,
particularly since English contains _lots_ of coined and borrowed words. So
your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with a new
sex-neutral pronoun (including all the necessary cases) that everybody will
quickly embrace.
John -dot- Renish -at- conner -dot- com
My statements are my own and do not represent Conner Peripherals, Inc.
-------------
Original Text
