On Monday 02 August 2004 12:28 pm, Helen Faulkner wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > So I've spent most of today battling my way through the New Maintainers > Guide, trying to work out how to package some very simple things. I > *think* I'm making headway... > > I've been reading various pieces of documentation/policy/guidelines in > my travels, and I keep finding things like this, from > http://www.debian.org/devel/join/nm-advocate: > > "There is a checklist of what a NM has to do. Basically, he needs a GPG > key signed by a developer, he has to answer some Philosophy and > Procedures questions and in the Tasks and Skills test he has to show > that he has the experience to be a good Debian developer.
With a bit of thought, there is usually a way to reword stuff like this to make it gender-neutral: "There is a checklist of what a NM has to do. The NM needs a GPG key signed by a developer, then has to answer some Philosophy and Procedures questions. The Tasks and Skills test proves that the NM has the experience to be a good Debian developer." For the parts where it's too awkward to avoid using pronouns, it's a little more difficult. And getting sucked into a world of alternating paragraphs, or carefully counting each incidence of each pronoun, is a seriously awful thing to contemplate. I vote for a "him or her" or "him/her" type of construct. That's not too annoying if it's not used very much, which it shouldn't be, as my example shows -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Carla Schroder this message brought to you by Libranet 2.8 and Kmail ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
