Comment on introduction pages
Hi! I found a bug in the intro pages for automake: http://sources.redhat.com/automake/automake.html#Introduction. The sentence The developer expresses the recipe to build *his* package in a Makefile must be wrong since I'm a woman and a user and have packages I want to build and those packages are mine, i.e *hers* would be correct in this case. Suggestion: change the sentence to The developer expresses the recipe to build *his/hers* package in a Makefile or The developer expresses the recipe to build *the* package in a Makefile Thanks for good support, best regards /Chris
Re: Comment on introduction pages
On 06/03/2010 08:01 AM, Christina Gratorp wrote: Hi! Hello, You mailed the autoconf list, but complained about the automake manual. You may want to resend this to a more appropriate list if you want anything to change, since this sentence does not appear in the autoconf manual. I found a bug in the intro pages for automake: http://sources.redhat.com/automake/automake.html#Introduction. The sentence The developer expresses the recipe to build *his* package in a Makefile must be wrong since I'm a woman and a user and have packages I want to build and those packages are mine, i.e *hers* would be correct in this case. Thanks for the report. However, English is one of those silly languages where the pronoun his can have a neuter sense rather than masculine, and this is one of those cases. Politically correct pundits are trying to eradicate that usage, but personally, I'm still of the opinion that his looks better than his/hers, as long as you understand that the usage is not locking down the gender of the antecedent. Suggestion: change the sentence to The developer expresses the recipe to build *his/hers* package in a Makefile or The developer expresses the recipe to build *the* package in a Makefile Changing to the loses the notion of ownership; and as there is more than one package with mention in the sentence (which package: the developer's, or Automake?), I feel that losing the possessive pronoun would be a step backwards. And using the developer's feels redundant. -- Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com+1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Comment on introduction pages
Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com writes: Thanks for the report. However, English is one of those silly languages where the pronoun his can have a neuter sense rather than masculine, and this is one of those cases. Politically correct pundits are trying to eradicate that usage, but personally, I'm still of the opinion that his looks better than his/hers, as long as you understand that the usage is not locking down the gender of the antecedent. The long-standing gender-neutral pronoun in English is singular their, as used by such people as Jane Austen. I would rewrite the sentence as: The developer expresses the recipe to build their package in a Makefile I realize that also bothers some people who are overly well-trained in the specific style of English forced by Latin prescriptivists during a short portion of the history of the language, but it's grammatically correct in English and has been for hundreds of years. In general, please reconsider your position stated above. Small things like this discourage women from participating in open source projects in little ways, and those little discouragements add up over time. It's a very minor thing to change to make someone feel more welcome by not literally writing their gender out of the manual, and the reward is far stronger than the small loss of perceived elegance of wording. -- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/
Re: Comment on introduction pages
On 06/03/2010 06:28 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com writes: Thanks for the report. However, English is one of those silly languages where the pronoun his can have a neuter sense rather than masculine, and this is one of those cases. Politically correct pundits are trying to eradicate that usage, but personally, I'm still of the opinion that his looks better than his/hers, as long as you understand that the usage is not locking down the gender of the antecedent. The long-standing gender-neutral pronoun in English is singular their, as used by such people as Jane Austen. I would rewrite the sentence as: The developer expresses the recipe to build their package in a Makefile A pedant would claim that it mixes singular and plural, but you are correct that it is in common enough usage that their package doesn't grate as badly on my nerves as his/her package. I realize that also bothers some people who are overly well-trained in the specific style of English forced by Latin prescriptivists during a short portion of the history of the language, but it's grammatically correct in English and has been for hundreds of years. In general, please reconsider your position stated above. Small things like this discourage women from participating in open source projects in little ways, and those little discouragements add up over time. It's a very minor thing to change to make someone feel more welcome by not literally writing their gender out of the manual, and the reward is far stronger than the small loss of perceived elegance of wording. I'm not the automake maintainer. Propose a patch with the new wording to automake-patches AT gnu DOT org, and it will likely be accepted if it improves the wording. -- Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com+1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Comment on introduction pages
Hi Chris, On 3 Jun 2010, at 21:01, Christina Gratorp wrote: I found a bug in the intro pages for automake: http://sources.redhat.com/automake/automake.html#Introduction. The sentence The developer expresses the recipe to build *his* package in a Makefile must be wrong since I'm a woman and a user and have packages I want to build and those packages are mine, i.e *hers* would be correct in this case. Suggestion: change the sentence to The developer expresses the recipe to build *his/hers* package in a Makefile or The developer expresses the recipe to build *the* package in a Makefile But then it would be wrong for an even larger percentage of automake users, almost none of which are hermaphrodites. At least with male pronouns we're exactly right 90% of the time or so. Cheers, -- Gary V. Vaughan (g...@gnu.org)
Re: Comment on introduction pages
On Thursday, June 03, 2010 22:26:49 Eric Blake wrote: On 06/03/2010 06:28 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com writes: Thanks for the report. However, English is one of those silly languages where the pronoun his can have a neuter sense rather than masculine, and this is one of those cases. Politically correct pundits are trying to eradicate that usage, but personally, I'm still of the opinion that his looks better than his/hers, as long as you understand that the usage is not locking down the gender of the antecedent. The long-standing gender-neutral pronoun in English is singular their, as used by such people as Jane Austen. I would rewrite the sentence as: The developer expresses the recipe to build their package in a Makefile A pedant would claim that it mixes singular and plural, but you are correct that it is in common enough usage that their package doesn't grate as badly on my nerves as his/her package. his/her is indeed garbage -mike signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
