Opened 9 years ago

Closed 9 years ago

#5855 closed enhancement (fixed)

Grammatical Improvements and Gender Neutrality

Reported by: rbarnes Owned by: warmerdam
Priority: normal Milestone:
Component: default Version: svn-trunk
Severity: normal Keywords:
Cc:

Description (last modified by rbarnes)

The attached patch fixes a few grammatical errors that I found in the documentation.

Further, it makes an effort to bring gender neutrality to both the code comments and user documentation. Numerous instances of "he", "him", and "his" were converted to "they", "them", and "theirs". Significantly less numerous uses (only one) of "she", "her", and "hers" were converted as well. Pronouns referring to specific people and pronouns in licenses were not changed.

In some cases a pedantic oxford comma has been added, but this is only on lines where I have made some other edit.

In some cases a line has been wrapped in an attempt to maintain an 80-character field width.

Attachments (1)

grammar_and_gender_fix.diff (13.6 KB ) - added by rbarnes 9 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (10)

comment:1 by rbarnes, 9 years ago

Description: modified (diff)

comment:2 by Jukka Rahkonen, 9 years ago

With Finnish as my native language I would like to ask if it is OK to mix singulars and plurals like this:

"If user asks for ordered dither, give them F-S."

comment:3 by Even Rouault, 9 years ago

Please drop the changes in libjpeg, libpng, libtiff and degrib as they are upstream projects. And in m4 too has this code has been imported from elsewhere. Changes in those components should be first accepted by their respective projects.

As a non native English speaker, I'm also wondering about the switch from "the user" to "they/their/them"...

comment:4 by rbarnes, 9 years ago

I will submit a new patch later today with reversions made to the upstream projects, as suggested. I will then endeavour to submit upstream patches to cover those scenarios.

In perhaps all cases, "the user" remains "the user"; however, references to the user using "he" and "she" have been replaced by "their" (or related words).

I am a native English speaker and will testify that the word "they" is used to denote a singular third-person when we don't want to specify that person's gender. See, for instance "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Contemporary_usage". An alternative would be to use "he or she" and "his or hers" throughout.

comment:5 by rbarnes, 9 years ago

I've modified the patch so that it no longer affects libjpeg, libpng, libtiff, degrib, and m4.

comment:6 by Jukka Rahkonen, 9 years ago

Interesting article, singular "they" seems to divide people. "User and their car" feels grammatically wrong in my non-native ear but it is not much harder to understand the meaning of the sentence once one knows the reason for such usage. Some folks in Sweden have started to use a new artificial neutral singular pronoun "hen" instead to gender aware han/hon (he/she). Finnish language is already fixed because for us one pronoun suits for all humans. Another one is used for animals and things.

Would it make the language of the documents feel odd if there were "users" throughout?

comment:7 by rbarnes, 9 years ago

"They" is pretty widely accepted in a singular form, especially by non-gendered folk.

Using "he or she" would be more inclusive than the present instances where only "he" is used, but a (smaller) minority of people may still feel excluded by it. Using "she" alone would run intentionally counter to expectations.

Pluralizing "user" would be one way to de-gender everything entirely. I can't speak to how odd that might make things sound. Does it sound better to your ear than a singular "they"? If so, it may be a solution.

I will email some friends to see if they know anyone who can comment.

by rbarnes, 9 years ago

Attachment: grammar_and_gender_fix.diff added

comment:8 by rbarnes, 9 years ago

I went through and found decent-sounding ways to reword the sections in question to avoid the use of pronouns. I believe this should solve resolve things. I have attached a modified patch.

comment:9 by Even Rouault, 9 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: newclosed

trunk r28575 "Correct typo and use gender neutral formulations (#5855, patch by rbarnes)"

Note: See TracTickets for help on using tickets.