5 ms·

> You guys are giving great feedback My feedback is, "Avoid making needless assumptions about gender.” :-) p.s. Thank you!

AaronO 12y ago
Fixed ! Thanks I did mean "guys" in a gender-neutral sense, but you're right it's just as good without.
- bovermyer 12y ago
  I wouldn't worry about it too much; look at his user name. This service is something I could have used about two years ago, when I was still actively an author. Maybe my curiosity about the toolchain (and my love of Markdown) will pull me back in.
  - picks_at_nits 12y ago
    A “nit” is a louse egg. On its own, it is nearly invisible and unlikely to trouble you. But left alone, it hatches into a louse. You can probably survive a louse or two quite easily. But if a couple of people in a community each have a louse or two, they breed. And eventually, your community is full of lice, and then it is very difficult to get rid of them. Monkeys groom each other regularly, picking at the nits, thus keeping them below the level where they can bloom into a full-on louse infestation. The metaphor applies to coding style, edge cases, questionable security practices, untested code, and grammar.
- picks_at_nits 12y ago
  Thank you. And may I say, gitbook is awesome. Imagine teleporting back to the 1980s and showing this to an author trying to write the next Windows 3.1 Missing Manual. They would swoon.
vog 12y ago
Not sure why this was downvoted. Pointing out the danger of dismissing half of the population (and thus potential customers) is a perfectly valid concern.
- Jun8 12y ago
  No it's not, please see my comment in this thread.
Jun8 12y ago
Many people use you guys not as a plural of guy, i.e. a male person, but closer to the sense of the Southern y'all, an all inclusive mode of address. Wikipedia lists is under you cognates as "Used regardless of the genders of those referred to" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You). In Britain it seems you lot has similar usage. The gender neutrality seems to be well-established in common usage, e.g. see the top answer answer to this ESE questions and the comments (http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gender-neutral http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gend...). We should understand that languages change, certain idioms and usages which were a bit objectionable in the past may change in meaning and vice versa. I think you guys represent the former. It may hurt gender-based sensibilities of some but many languages have build in defaults that use the masculine form, a well-known example is French where (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...): In French: Vos amis sont arrivés — ils étaient en avance ("Your friends have arrived – they were early"). Here the masculine plural pronoun ils is used rather than the feminine elles, unless it is known that all the friends in question are female (in which case the noun would also change to amies and the past participle would change to arrivées). I am always a bit surprised by the emphasis put on gender neutral language, esp. in the US, it is usually pointed that this is sexist and may lead to many of the gender imbalances. Yet other languages where this is is even more prevalent does not seem to place that much emphasis, e.g. French (http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/836/given-the-lack-of-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-in-french-how-should-one-refer-to-so http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/836/given-the-lack...). I do not speak French, my question to native speakers is: are there similar efforts in French to rid the language of sexism? According to Wikipedia L’Académie française does not quite support such movements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages_with_grammatical_gender#French http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages_...).
- vog 12y ago
  It may still be advisable to avoid phrases that are easily misunderstood, even though they technically may be correct. To put it differently, this is still dismissing quite a big share of non-native English speaking women, as you can't be sure that those subtleties are well-known in the public. (This whole sub thread demonstrates this, by the way.)
tomek_zemla 12y ago
I live in Canada and in modern English spoken here 'guys' can refer to people of any gender. You often hear a group of young women (only) using phrases like "let's go guys" instead of "let's go girls". So, at least where I live 'guys' does not imply any gender.
vog 12y ago
Wow, this is really HN at its best. Downvoting the doer for incorporating constructive feedback. sigh

AaronO 12y ago

Fixed ! Thanks I did mean "guys" in a gender-neutral sense, but you're right it's just as good without.

bovermyer 12y ago
I wouldn't worry about it too much; look at his user name. This service is something I could have used about two years ago, when I was still actively an author. Maybe my curiosity about the toolchain (and my love of Markdown) will pull me back in.
- picks_at_nits 12y ago
  A “nit” is a louse egg. On its own, it is nearly invisible and unlikely to trouble you. But left alone, it hatches into a louse. You can probably survive a louse or two quite easily. But if a couple of people in a community each have a louse or two, they breed. And eventually, your community is full of lice, and then it is very difficult to get rid of them. Monkeys groom each other regularly, picking at the nits, thus keeping them below the level where they can bloom into a full-on louse infestation. The metaphor applies to coding style, edge cases, questionable security practices, untested code, and grammar.
picks_at_nits 12y ago
Thank you. And may I say, gitbook is awesome. Imagine teleporting back to the 1980s and showing this to an author trying to write the next Windows 3.1 Missing Manual. They would swoon.

vog 12y ago

Not sure why this was downvoted. Pointing out the danger of dismissing half of the population (and thus potential customers) is a perfectly valid concern.

Jun8 12y ago
No it's not, please see my comment in this thread.

Jun8 12y ago

Many people use you guys not as a plural of guy, i.e. a male person, but closer to the sense of the Southern y'all, an all inclusive mode of address. Wikipedia lists is under you cognates as "Used regardless of the genders of those referred to" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You). In Britain it seems you lot has similar usage. The gender neutrality seems to be well-established in common usage, e.g. see the top answer answer to this ESE questions and the comments (http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gender-neutral http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gend...). We should understand that languages change, certain idioms and usages which were a bit objectionable in the past may change in meaning and vice versa. I think you guys represent the former. It may hurt gender-based sensibilities of some but many languages have build in defaults that use the masculine form, a well-known example is French where (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...): In French: Vos amis sont arrivés — ils étaient en avance ("Your friends have arrived – they were early"). Here the masculine plural pronoun ils is used rather than the feminine elles, unless it is known that all the friends in question are female (in which case the noun would also change to amies and the past participle would change to arrivées). I am always a bit surprised by the emphasis put on gender neutral language, esp. in the US, it is usually pointed that this is sexist and may lead to many of the gender imbalances. Yet other languages where this is is even more prevalent does not seem to place that much emphasis, e.g. French (http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/836/given-the-lack-of-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-in-french-how-should-one-refer-to-so http://french.stackexchange.com/questions/836/given-the-lack...). I do not speak French, my question to native speakers is: are there similar efforts in French to rid the language of sexism? According to Wikipedia L’Académie française does not quite support such movements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages_with_grammatical_gender#French http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languages_...).

vog 12y ago
It may still be advisable to avoid phrases that are easily misunderstood, even though they technically may be correct. To put it differently, this is still dismissing quite a big share of non-native English speaking women, as you can't be sure that those subtleties are well-known in the public. (This whole sub thread demonstrates this, by the way.)

tomek_zemla 12y ago

I live in Canada and in modern English spoken here 'guys' can refer to people of any gender. You often hear a group of young women (only) using phrases like "let's go guys" instead of "let's go girls". So, at least where I live 'guys' does not imply any gender.

vog 12y ago

Wow, this is really HN at its best. Downvoting the doer for incorporating constructive feedback. sigh