Wouter Verhelst <[email protected]> writes: > A "Chairman" is a person. A "Chair" may be an object.
> I don't think anyone will misinterpret your proposed new wording into > thinking the TC has a physical chair that someone sits on, but the > s/Chairmain/Chair/ you apply does to me seem to introduce some > grammatical ambiguity that could make the text of the constitution less > clear than it might be. > Since I'm not a native English speaker, I'll assume for now that it's > just me and that there's no problem; but if other people do feel the > same way about this, perhaps now's the right time to do something about > it? Once this GR passes, it's going to be hard to fix that... At least in the US, this is the standard fix to replace chairman with a gender neutral term, so I would expect most US readers to be familiar with the intended meaning already. See, for example: https://www.purchase.edu/departments/ccs/EditorialStyleGuide/AppendixA-Z/c.aspx chair (vs. chairman, chairwoman, chairperson) “Chair is widely regarded as the best gender-neutral choice. Since the mid-17th century, chair has referred to an office of authority” (Chicago Manual; exception to AP style). The use of chair as a verb is acceptable, although lead, head, or preside over is preferred. and multiple other style guides on-line. (And if this page is correct, it's also the Chicago Manual of Style recommendation, which is the "official" style guide for US English insofar as such a thing exists.) -- Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
