Re: DevRef English writing style advice, was: incomprehensible sentence in exim4-config.pot.

[MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop>]

Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>
> > -       <sect2>Be gender neutral
> > +       <sect2>Be gender-equal
> >         <p>
> > -The world is made of men and women. Please use gender-neutral
> > -constructions in your writing. This is not Political Correctness, this
> > +The world contains men and women. Please mix both genders
> > +in your examples. This is not Political Correctness, this
> >  is showing respect to all humanity.
> 
> I suggest that this specific part be discussed in d-w. I have no
> strong opinion though I tend to prefer the "neutral" way o the "equal"
> way (how can one be equal if there's only one example..:-)))

As I've previously stated, I feel d-w is fatally flawed and
some aspects are demonstrated by this topic.  Several list
members zealously advocate using indefinites (like "their") -
apparently in the belief that they are gender-neutral definites
- or neologisms like "sher".  This makes the text harder to
understand and ignores that it probably won't change what
anyone thinks: few linguists today believe in the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis that language shapes thought, so please don't make
the text more clumsy by following it.

Examples should be mostly definite situations, not vague
hand-waving descriptions. So, they should use definite pronouns
and using "it" for people would be needlessly confusing.
I support using different genders for different examples (this
can actually make it clearer that the example situations are not
necessarily linked) and one could offer equal opportunity for one
example by using a random number generator to pick the gender.

> > Maybe further discussion should be on debian-l10n-english?
> 
> I fully agree. This could be a very good occasion to revive that list,
> indeed.

It's not really been sleeping, but it's not high traffic.
I've moved to posting this there.
-- 
MJR/slef
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