"Man-months" offend some of your audience.

[Geoff Hart <Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Eric Dunn wondered <<As a technical writer, I would have to
ask what is wrong with man-hour? Use person hours if you
must (would work hours be better?), but who is asking for the
change?>>

In my experience, a large (and increasing) number of women
are asking for the change. As a technical writer, I personally
feel it's unwise to intentionally antagonize a large (and
increasing) proportion of our audience when the workaround
is so damned simple. "Worker-hour" (or month, or whatever)
works just fine, emphasizes the actor or action rather than the
gender, and really isn't that great a stretch; nor is it
particularly awkward to read.

<<A great many people are grown up enough to realise that
in the english language Man (as a species) includes both male
and female genders.>>

And a great many aren't "grown up enough", or are, but find
it painful or simply annoying. Yes, you can go to far for
political correctness (e.g., changing "manual" labor to "hand"
labor because of an incorrect assumption that the root "man"
means male), but this isn't one of those cases: if you can
please half your audience without making the text
significantly more difficult to write or read, why not do so?

<<On another note, how is a man-month defined? Without
knowing how many workdays in a month and how many
hours in a day, how do you define the term?>>

As you note, it's a meaningless term unless the numbers of
days per month and hours per day are both defined. That's a
more serious issue by far than the gender issue, but by no
means is the gender issue insignificant.


--Geoff Hart @8^{)}     Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Patience comes to those who wait."--Anon.


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