Re: GR Proposal: replace "Chairman" with "Chair" throughout the Debian Constitution
Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:
> A "Chairman" is a person. A "Chair" may be an object.
> I don't think anyone will misinterpret your proposed new wording into
> thinking the TC has a physical chair that someone sits on, but the
> s/Chairmain/Chair/ you apply does to me seem to introduce some
> grammatical ambiguity that could make the text of the constitution less
> clear than it might be.
> Since I'm not a native English speaker, I'll assume for now that it's
> just me and that there's no problem; but if other people do feel the
> same way about this, perhaps now's the right time to do something about
> it? Once this GR passes, it's going to be hard to fix that...
At least in the US, this is the standard fix to replace chairman with a
gender neutral term, so I would expect most US readers to be familiar with
the intended meaning already.
See, for example:
https://www.purchase.edu/departments/ccs/EditorialStyleGuide/AppendixA-Z/c.aspx
chair (vs. chairman, chairwoman, chairperson) “Chair is widely
regarded as the best gender-neutral choice. Since the mid-17th
century, chair has referred to an office of authority” (Chicago
Manual; exception to AP style). The use of chair as a verb is
acceptable, although lead, head, or preside over is preferred.
and multiple other style guides on-line. (And if this page is correct,
it's also the Chicago Manual of Style recommendation, which is the
"official" style guide for US English insofar as such a thing exists.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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