Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Use gender-neutral language in documentation

On 22 September 2015 at 14:09, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:

> You are fighting a losing battle. Think of they/them/their/theirs as being
> indefinitely gendered third person singular pronouns, as well as being
> third person plural pronouns. Yes it's a relatively new usage, but I don't
> think its at all unreasonable (speaking as someone who has been known to
> dislike some new usages and neologisms). It's not at all sloppy. On the
> contrary, it's quite deliberate. It's just not quite traditional.
>

​​It _is_ sloppy. It says "I can't be bothered to write a sentence that's
grammatically correct".
​

> You need to get over that.
>

I don't need to get over anything. If someone sends me a document that uses
"their" in a singular usage, I will think that person is lazy. That will
continue to be the case, whether people tell me that it's accepted usage or
not.

In much the same way, I know that I can safely discount the opinion of
anyone who uses "literally" to mean anything other than "literally"
(
​similarly anyone who uses
"like" as a quotative)
​, even though both of those things are now in fairly common usage.​
​

> Your proposed style would make writing docs a lot harder,
>

I don't buy that at all. It takes a couple of seconds, if that, to come up
with something.

> forcing us to avoid use of the singular in cases where it is quite
> natural.
>

​Better than using the plural in the singular case.
​

> I'm strongly opposed to such a style rule.
>

​Meh. I don't really care how it's written, certainly not enough to make a
stand about it. I'd rather you guys concentrate on writing the brilliant
software than wasting time on stuff like this. I only replied because the
conversation popped up in my inbox and it seemed to be something on which
opinions were requested.

Geoff