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Subject:Re: The myth of sexist language From:"Kahn, Stacey" <skahn -at- WB -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 11 Aug 1995 16:09:45 U
Callie> Instead of writing "Each user can open his personal file by ..."
Callie> I would probably write "A user's personal file can be opened by ..."
Jean> So you will have to try harder to match the clarity of "Each user
Jean> can open his personal file by choosing the Open command of the File
Jean> menu."
-----------------
<me>
1. What's clear here? When I read "...his personal file" my initial reaction
is to wonder whose file it is that I can open-- and why I'd want to, and
whether I'd get caught.
2. The presence of *any* pronoun in this sort of sentence has become so rare
that the structure alone, regardless of the sex of the pronoun used, confuses
people. We don't use "his" *or* "her" to refer to the reader/user.
3. If this is a user manual, I'm not interested in what the user *can* do, I'm
interested in how to do stuff:
"To open your personal file, select File, Open."
The idea *is* to make it easy to understand, right?
--Stacey Kahn . Washington, D.C
skahn -at- wb -dot- com
speaking for myself and not for my employers
