Re: The myth of sexist language

[Callie <callie -at- WRITEPAGE -dot- COM>]

In article <ichbiah -dot- 350 -dot- 0011890B -at- jdi -dot- tiac -dot- net>,
   ichbiah -at- jdi -dot- tiac -dot- net (Jean D. Ichbiah) wrote:
>In article <408nki$abp -at- nnrp3 -dot- primenet -dot- com> callie -at- writepage -dot- com (Callie)
writes:

>>Instead of writing "Each user can open his personal file by ..." I would
>>probably write "A user's personal file can be opened by ..."

>In a previous posting, I was mentioning this horrible trend to use
>the passive form and here you are with an example.
>This is very much germanic style "es wird getantzt"
>(literally, "some dancing is going on").  Avoiding any mention of the
>subject so that nobody ever knows who is really doing the thing.
Jean -
  Calm down ... you are panicking over an incomplete sentence in a a quickly
written example.  I have NEVER made it less than clear exactly who should do
what, to what, and why, in a real manual.

>Coming back to your example:  "A user's personal file can be opened by using
>the Open command of the File menu".
That is NOT MY EXAMPLE ... that is your assumption about the end of the
sentence. I actually wrote something similar today:
"The employee records can be retrieved by the following users: system
administrators, nurses, and nurse administrators.  No other users have
permission."  (any thing unclear there?)
Were I writing to a user, I would be using the direct statement:
"You can open your personal files by clicking the OPEN button and entering
your password."  (anything unclear?)

>So  you will have to try harder to match the clarity of "Each user can open
>his personal file by choosing the Open command of the File menu."
How about "Users can open their personal files by ...."? (wimping out into the
plural, but avoiding the dreaded sexist he)

>Jean Ichbiah