On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 10:01 AM Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com> wrote: > What *is* the correct inclusive way to refer to an unidentified person > in a technical document, without sacrificing clarity by using > convoluted circumlocutions like "he/her/they" or over-use of the > passive voice? My impression is that commonly accepted language rules > and usage are lagging behind, and there's no good answer to this > question yet :-( > > Paul
Paul, this is actually a good question to ask. In general, singular "they" is becoming more popular. It's already used frequently for the singular indeterminate pronoun: "Someone wants to talk to you." "What do they want?" Those who favor prescriptivism will tell you this is improper usage (especially when it goes from an unknown someone to a known someone) but it avoids the strange construction of "he or she" and is more inclusive of diverse genders and is historically how the word was used. (For a fun counter example, the word "you" used to be a plural second person pronoun, but no one today would argue that it makes no sense to use it for an individual.) Piper Thunstrom My public key is available at https://keybase.io/pathunstrom Public key fingerprint: 8FF9 3F4E C447 55EC 4658 BDCC A57E A7A4 86D2 644F _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/OSTXWM64JZ4NEKJ7D7VKSHB6BJL4QNQL/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
