One critique I had when I was reading through is the use of he/him when referring to a hypothetical user. This is likely region-dependent, but it sounds awkward to me to assign gender to an unknown user.
Some authors prefer they/them and some (more rarely) prefer an equal number of masculine and feminine pronouns.
Great work, nonetheless.
The problem is that I'm not native speaker. Could you tell me, if it's correct to say, e.g.
"If the user wants to do this, they will do this"
I mean, if I need to use a single, not plural, how to properly refer to ... him/her?
I put him all the time because "a user" in Russian language has a gender, while in English it doesn't have a gender.
I'm always confused about this.
For example, "Imagine you have a user who wants to sign up. After (___) sings up"?
Please, give me advice here, this is really a problem =(
And yes, it's absolutely correct to go with "...they will do this" when referring to a hypothetical genderless user. Defaulting to 'he/him' (and presuming a gender) is less and less acceptable.
>"Imagine you have a user who wants to sign up. After (___) sings up"?
"After they sign up, ..." works there and can be used to refer to the singular person. Just make sure the verbs agree ('they sign' vs 'she signs').
One other thing I'd note: you'll almost never hear a native English speaker use the phrase "fill the form".
Now, whether a person opts for 'fill in' vs 'fill out' is another question and seems to vary by english region.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/fill-out-a-...
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In portuguese, "the user" has a gender as well ("o usuário" i.e. "(the male) user"). We usually ignore linguistic gender in most places, which causes all sorts of confusion to people coming from countries where nouns are "un-gendered".
You can use "they" as a singular pronoun.
You can use "one" like: "if one wants to do this, one will do this."
You can use "his or her" like: "if the user wants to do this, he or she will do this."
Some writers like to rotate "he" and "she". So sometimes they write "if the user wants to do this, he has to do this first." Then later, in another paragraph, the writers write, "The user doesn't like this widget. She prefers that widget."
"If the user wants"
but
"If they want"
Superb, thank you!