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In response to my suggestion revision ("Personal Details records and
maintains complete personal information about employees"), Shelly Kapoor
wondered: <<Does that not personify Personal Details? Personal Details in
not an employee/user. Also, allows implies permission and the feature does
not grant permission. It's just a tool that enables you to do something.>>
Problems with personification arise only when anthropomorphizing something
misleads the reader into treating it as something animate and conscious (or
having personality); that's not the case here. It's no more wrong to write
in this manner than it is to say "Word crashes", "unsupported objects fall",
"red hot metal hurts me when I touch it", and so on. These are simply active
verbs paired with inanimate nouns; in this particular case, neither "record"
nor "maintain" imply any persona, and thus, don't anthropomorphize the
software. Although I agree with you that "allows you to" comes closer to
personifying something inanimate, I didn't add that explanation when I
removed this from the original phrase because explaining how this differs
from "lets you" is a rather subtle point. More to the point, eliminating the
whole aspect of giving permission or enabling made the sentence shorter and
more direct.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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