[OT] Re: Transfering stack between WinXP and MacOS9

keith keith at vortex.co.uk
Mon Jul 11 10:58:29 EDT 2005


Sometime around 11/7/05 (at 10:04 -0400) Thomas McGrath III said:

>I don't know if he/she/it was the same person who decided that but I 
>bet he/she/it was actually a he/she/it and not a he/she/it.
>
>Seriously, when doing presentations that are going to be in english 
>but presented in foreign speaking countries I always am asked to 
>replace he or she with he/she or him and her with him/her etc. in 
>all of my presentations.
>
>It would be nice to have a neutral way of identifying the person 
>with out gender. This would be politically correct now a days. FBOW 
>(for better or worse)

I find that bending the rules rather than breaking them is the best 
solution, here, as in life in general. If the gender is unknown, a 
simple "they" will suffice almost all of the time, even when speaking 
about an individual. That, and using their name.

I do admit that your problem of translating to other languages is a 
bit more difficult.

I remember my mother's reaction to an American 'translation' of one 
of her books (this was from the Queen's English, BTW!) which had her 
conciously-written uses of "he" and "his" changed to a random mixture 
of he/her and his/hers. All in the name of political correctness.

Frankly, *that* sort of attempt to paper over real issues is fairly 
insulting to the intelligence of hims and hers alike.

k

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