Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] Use singular "they" when appropriate

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2021 15:02:51 +0900

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]> writes:

> Or, if we just fix these existing occurrences as a one-off there'll be
> no existing examples of it in-tree, and as people tend to imitate
> existing documentation they're unlikely to introduce new
> occurrences.

I suspect that may be a bit too optimistic.  It is too easy to
discuss interaction among users and introduce pronouns to refer to
them, and when it happens, it is far easier to have a document to
point at and tell them why we want them to rephrase if not how
exactly.  For that reason, I'd prefer to have some word about the
desire to make examples and explanations gender-neutral in the
guidelines.  The mechanics we recommend to achieve the goal does not
have to be specified if we want brevity---that can be learned by
imitating existing practices.

> If and when Felipe's <[email-masked]>
> is applied how small is the diff you'll still have rebased on top of
> that?

I just retried a "competing" merge that got ugly ;-)

Between Derrick's two "singular they" patches (one for comments, the
other for docs) and Felipe's two patches (the same split), they
touch identical base text.  Only the way they neuter the description
is different, and to me the latter feels a bit more ESL friendly.

So, the main things that are missing from Felipe's version that we
may want to build on top before the whole discussion can be
concluded are:

 - Derrick's "typofix" patch, but if I recall correctly it needed a
   fix-up in one of its hunks?

 - Guidelines; you had a more generic readability tips that would
   (incidentally) result in nudging the writers to be more gender
   neutral, which I think is going in the right direction, but I do
   prefer to see an explicit mention of gender-neutrality as one
   bullet item.

Thanks.