Re: Gender-specific pronouns

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

On Tuesday, April 27, 1999 8:27 AM, Spencer Fleury [SMTP:boylston_st -at- YAHOO -dot- COM]
wrote:
> This is sort of related to the "man-month v.
> work-month" thread, but not directly.
>
> My own company has been making every effort to be as
> inclusive, gender-wise, as possible with our end-user
> documentation.  Until recently, when referring to an
> unnamed person like the production manager, general
> manager, etc, we have used the "he or she will . . . "
> construction when using pronouns.  Once it was decided
> that this construction is a bit clunky, our guidelines
> were arbitrarily changed to mandate use of "they /
> their," even when referring to only one person.
>
> This *really* bothers the linguistic purist in me, but
> my real problem is that when I complained about it, I
> could not come up with an acceptable counteroffer.
> Does anyone have any suggestions for a
> non-gender-specific pronoun set that *also* delineates
> between plural and singular?

I agree with avoiding the use of they/their in singular situations as well.
 How about a simple reword, "the user will", or try writing in the second
person (which I tend to do in my User Guides) and say "you will".  The use of a
pronoun might not be necessary in all situations.

Just my $0.02

Suzette Seveny
Markham, Ontario, Canada
sseveny -at- petvalu -dot- com or suzette -at- yesic -dot- com
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>


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