Re: Manmonth or Peoplemonth?

[Suzette Seveny <sseveny -at- PETVALU -dot- COM>]

Perhaps the solution is not in replacing terms like man-hour with a
gender-neutral replacement (person-hours, work-hours, etc.) but in re-phrasing
it totally.  There is often more than one way to convey meaning, and
alternatives such as "two months of effort/programming time", "24 hours of
billable time", etc., need to be explored.

I believe in user gender-neutral language in my documentation.  I don't believe
I've seen any messages in this thread from women, saying that it doesn't
matter.  As long as there is a possibility that even one user might be
offended, I will strive to avoid gender-specific terms.  We have had a male
dominated society for so long, that defaults such as "he", "-man", sound
natural, but I agree it needs to change and as technical writers for diverse
audiences, we bear some responsibility for setting a standard.

By the way, I refer to mankind as humankind or homo sapiens.  I don't think
I've used mankind, fireman, policeman, etc. for years.  The alternatives (human
species, firefighters, police officer, etc.) are now more natural sounding to
me.

The intent of the phrase "man-hours" or the like, have no specific importance
to me that I can recall, but I do think we are bright enough to convey the same
intent in rephrasing of the dialogue.

Suzette Seveny
Markham, Ontario, Canada
sseveny -at- petvalu -dot- com or suzette -at- yesic -dot- com
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Any opinions expressed are MY opinions.
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> Pamela Jasper wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm writing a process document for my client and need to describe the
> > software estimating process.
> >
> > Has anyone found a gender-neutral term for things like man-hour, man-month,
> > etc?
> >


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