{"id":517,"date":"2012-04-27T15:40:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T19:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?p=517"},"modified":"2012-05-23T16:05:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T20:05:39","slug":"thats-what-they-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"“That’s what THEY said!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a linguist who takes grammar and language use very seriously. This is one of the few times I will stand on my pet-peeve soap box. \u00a0What caused this?<\/p>\n

<rant><\/p>\n

It was a blurb of text in a document on the Free Software Foundation’s site. \u00a0“…as long as the user is able to authorize the programs she wants to use…”<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in the 1970’s, when I was in junior high school, I had a very wise English teacher who predicted the long-term influence counter-culturalism movements in the United States would have\u00a0on the English language. \u00a0His point was that there was a traditional male-slant to many documents in English and other languages throughout history. \u00a0Essentially, when a person was referred to by a noun in the early part of a sentence, e.g. …<\/p>\n

The lendee<\/strong> has an obligation to pay the lendor, and will be in good standing with the lendor, {insert conditional clause here}.<\/p>\n

… it was accepted practice to further refer to the subject of the sentence (i.e. lendee) in the conditional clause with the pronoun “he”. \u00a0E.g.<\/p>\n

The lendee has an obligation to pay the lendor, and will be in good standing with the lendor, provided he<\/strong><\/em> makes timely payments according to a schedule.<\/p>\n

.. even if the person signing the contract was a she,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>or more than one person. \u00a0Obviously, challenging this practice was one of the things that came out of the feminist movement. \u00a0So during this time of the feminist movement, many people were experimenting with Ms. instead of Miss or Mrs. \u00a0And it was common to see the sentence above written as…<\/p>\n

The lendee has an obligation to pay the lendor, and will be in good standing with the lendor, provided\u00a0he\/she<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0makes timely payments according to a schedule.<\/p>\n

While it seems a logical way to address the issue, try reading a document where the “he\/she” pronoun is used over and over again. \u00a0It gets very annoying, very quickly. \u00a0And many of the hardline feminists were just writing “she” where “he” would have appeared before, to throw more fuel on a fire already started.<\/p>\n

So my English teacher cautioned everyone not to take sides in the debate, and use a very simple technique which actually makes the text become neutral and elegant: \u00a0use the plural. \u00a0In all but the legalistic language I have used above, the plural will neutralize any potential offense to the reader of the text.\u00a0And as for the legalese, the problem is simply solved by not using any pronoun.<\/p>\n

Knowing this, the original phrase quoted from the Free Software Foundations site now changes to:<\/p>\n

“…as long as the users are able to authorize the programs they want to use…”<\/em><\/p>\n

There are some real advantages to doing this<\/p>\n