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[187.188.155.231]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id s15sm1984885oih.15.2021.06.07.18.47.23 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Mon, 07 Jun 2021 18:47:24 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2021 20:47:22 -0500 From: Felipe Contreras To: =?UTF-8?B?w4Z2YXIgQXJuZmrDtnLDsCBCamFybWFzb24=?= , Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, gitster@pobox.com, sandals@crustytoothpaste.net, stolee@gmail.com, jrnieder@gmail.com, emilyshaffer@google.com, Derrick Stolee , Derrick Stolee Message-ID: <60becc2adf199_dcf6520847@natae.notmuch> In-Reply-To: <875yyp4fun.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> References: <875yyp4fun.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] CodingGuidelines: recommend singular they Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org =C3=86var Arnfj=C3=B6r=C3=B0 Bjarmason wrote: > On Mon, Jun 07 2021, Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget wrote: > > If the reader does not consider that pronoun to apply to them, > > then they can experience cognitive dissonance that removes focus from= > > the information. [...] > > When choosing a gendered pronoun, that pronoun no longer applies to > > nearly half of possible readers. Even if we alternated between "he/hi= m" > > and "she/her" perfectly evenly, we would still expect male and female= > > readers to experience an incorrect pronoun half the time. However, so= me > > readers will not prescribe to either of these binary genders. Those > > readers hence suffer an incorrect pronoun the entire time. Singular > > "they" applies to every reader. > = > I'd expect most people to not actively read technical documentation and= > try to personally actively ascribe themselves to prose that clearly > forms an example of something they may or may not do. > = > If that is how people commonly read documentation and find it > off-putting I'd expect gendered language to be the least of our > problems, since even with s/\bhe|she\b/they/g so much of what's left is= > still referring to hypothetical situations most users won't want to fin= d > themselves in. > = > Maybe I'm overthinking this, but per the above I'd think if this is a > problem with losing the reader that we'd need more structural solutions= > to it in the common case, e.g. more guarded language that you should no= t > read further if you don't care about XYZ aspect of the technical featur= e > we're about to discuss. Personally I have no trouble at all reading instructions mentioning a female user and see how they apply to me just the same. Using a singular "they" for semantically singular antecedents does sound totally broken to me, and that does distract me from what the documentation is supposedly trying to transmit. I have trouble parsing the documentation as it is--which does feel to be in a very detached and unpersonal style. Changes like s/s?he/they/ only make the situation worse. I would rather have the documentation speak to me more like a person, and less like a previous-generation AI. Cheers. -- = Felipe Contreras=