Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] CodingGuidelines: recommend singular they

From: Robert Karszniewicz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 2021 20:20:06 +0000

On Mon, Jun 07, 2021 at 04:57:48PM +0000, Derrick Stolee via GitGitGadget wrote:
> From: Derrick Stolee <[email-masked]>
> 
> Technical writing seeks to convey information with minimal friction. One
> way that a reader can experience friction is if they encounter a
> description of "a user" that is later simplified using a gendered
> pronoun. If the reader does not consider that pronoun to apply to them,
> then they can experience cognitive dissonance that removes focus from
> the information.
> 
> If we use singular "they/them" pronouns instead of "he/him" or "she/her"
> pronouns, then we can avoid this congitive load on the reader.

That is funny, because I experience cognitive dissonance exactly when
people use singular plural-pronouns. ("What? Did I read right? Is it a
group? Or a company?" [seek back to verify, or explicitly ignore the
hiccup])

On the other hand I strongly doubt that such a cognitive dissonance
happens when people come across a wrong gender.  When documentation
speaks of "the user" -- *any* user -- then it does not in any way
conflict that that "any user" might be female.

And I'm not just theorizing, as I /did/ have the following experience
(anecdote):
One time I was presented a document which I was supposed to read and
sign. I read through the whole document all fine and only at the very
end I noticed that the whole document is consistently written in the
female form (and that was in German, there is no distinct neutral
"the"). I made a joke about it asking where the document version for
males is, to which he responded: "Now you know how it feels being
female". Which -- and I want to stress this -- I found deeply insulting.

"He or she" is problematic in its own way, but you already propose
against it.

As one of the users whose happiness is being discussed here, I can only
ask not to change from singular to plural pronouns. If you must, pick
"she", I don't mind. Or "it", or "person", whatever, as long as it
matches the cardinality of "the user".

> Using singular "they" is also incredibly efficient. Choosing a gendered
> pronoun is usually arbitrary between "he" or "she". Using constructs
> such as "he or she", "s/he", or "(s)he" are more complicated than
> singular "they".
> 
> When choosing a gendered pronoun, that pronoun no longer applies to
> nearly half of possible readers. Even if we alternated between "he/him"
> and "she/her" perfectly evenly, we would still expect male and female
> readers to experience an incorrect pronoun half the time. However, some
> readers will not prescribe to either of these binary genders. Those
> readers hence suffer an incorrect pronoun the entire time. Singular
> "they" applies to every reader.

The 'singular "they"' does not apply to every reader and might not even
apply to most readers. It might be natural for native speakers to know
that "they" is "1 or more people", but that is not what foreigners are
taught what "they" means. In my entire curriculum at school I have not
once been taught that "they" can mean "one person". Therefore, whenever
I see it used that way, I cannot help but stumble. Every time.

Not to mention that the documentation does not talk about "the reader"
but "the user". Yes, had the documentation talked about me specifically,
the reader, and I suddenly had to assume another gender, I might ask
myself what's going on. But it never crossed my mind to assume the
identity of an unspecified, indeterminate "the user".

Thank you,
Robert Karszniewicz