4 ms·
Here is a writing tip: if you talk about a hypothetical person of undefined sex, choose "he" or "she" and stick with it. Some writing teachers say one should al
by hristov 17y ago
Here is a writing tip: if you talk about a hypothetical person of undefined sex, choose "he" or "she" and stick with it. Some writing teachers say one should always use "she" to avoid sexism, but that is obviously not followed. As long as you do not actively reinforce stereotypes (i.e., you call all hypothetical flight attendants "she" and all hypothetical lawyers "he"), I think using "he" is fine.
But if you mix "he" or "she" up then you just raise questions in the reader's mind. Here the author has half "he's" and half "she's" which opens him (or her!) to bunch of accusations of sexism. Why was the newbie a "she"?
- rue 17y ago"They."
- pmichaud 17y agoThey is plural.
- barrkel 17y agoThey has been used as a neutral generic singular in English for a very long time. I believe there are extant examples in Shakespeare, for example.
- jackfoxy 17y ago..but colloquially "they" has been used as the 3rd person unisex singular for a long time. Still don't understand how "she" avoids sexism. The article is missing the stage where you get into management, fall hopelessly behind on current technologies, and forget how to code.
- sorbits 17y agoIn this article it would have been fine to use singular ‘they’ especially since each fictive person is really a group of people, so even read as plural ‘they’ works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- drbaskin 17y agoThis is more of a curiosity than anything, but one can always use Michael Spivak's gender-neutral pronouns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun
- 3pt14159 17y agoOh man I wish these were in widespread use. It would simplify things greatly for everyone. I kinda wish HN just started using them and it spread out from here.
- paulgb 17y agoWikipedia has a nice chart of gender neutral pronouns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Summary
- Qz 17y agoThere are a bunch of different proposed gender neutral pronouns... which is part of why no one particular set has caught on yet.
- NeilCJames 17y agoI use 'singular they' because at some point 'one' started to connote pretentiousness. I don't see how Spivak pronouns solve that problem, but this off-topic sub-discussion has convinced me to go back to using 'one' (for disambiguation's sake).
- sandaru1 17y ago"The Guru" is also a "she"
- roundsquare 17y agoTrue, but the guru is just depicted as an advanced newbie.