> When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek out?
> she
Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine pronoun here?
If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit?
I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of sexism if that's the goal.
Since then the world has changed quite rapidly when it comes to norms around writing, pronouns, and gender, so perhaps "they" fills the same role for younger writers.
Calling that an "alteration" rather than a "substitution" gave me a different perspective, though.
I'd often find Alice/Bob examples in (programming-related) books, but seeing "she" instead of "he" in situations where gender isn't important wasn't that common in my experience.
Some other commenters pointed out that the practice is quite old in English. My use of English is mostly limited to reading technical information and blog posts so I can only assume that the alteration not being popular is (was?) mostly intrinsic to the technical articles/blog posts.
That's funny. Saying "off-putting" I had exactly that in mind.
What? She? I must've zoned out.
Maybe the irritation's worth it for the effect that effort's having on culture. I really don't know. In the end, it's not that big a problem for me, just a little irritating, so I simply hope it's doing something actually-helpful for someone and don't worry about it too much.
Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.
"Everything does not need"
But in my head it sounds better as
"Not everything needs"
Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.
"Not everything needs..." is definitely acceptable English, and sounds more-correct to my ears. It would also be fluent to write that sentence as "Some things do not need...".
As a logician, I find the phrasing "Everything does not need..." to make me a bit queasy, and I would prefer if it were regarded as unacceptable.
HOWEVER, it's not unacceptable. For example, a famous aphorism is "all that glisters is not gold" (often diluted, in recent centuries, to "all that glitters is not gold"), which is surely not intended to claim that gold never glitters. So I guess I have to tolerate hearing it the illogical way.
Fear not, the exact same thing happens in other languages. Must be that you just don't hear much, for instance, Swedish: "Allt som glittrar är inte guld." (Should logically be "Inte allt som glittrar är guld", just like in English.)
> Same goes for the inverted usage of "all but", which imo _should_ mean "everything except for" but seems to mean "almost". I wonder what causes this.
That doesn't feel "inverted" at all to me. You just need to interpret the "all" as it must have been intended: "the whole"; "all the way there" -- then "all but" quite logically becomes "not quite the whole way there".
Like, if a piece of software was almost, but not quite completely, finished ==> "the software was all (the way to) but (not quite arrived at) finished."
Maybe it helps to see the similarity with this related form: Almost all the bugs were fixed, but one was left ==> "All but one of the bugs were fixed." (The bug-collective was all but vanquished. :-)
However, some people use the first incorrectly when they really mean the second. This happens often enough that you could argue the incorrect usage has now become idiomatic as well.
All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
(Also Tolkien, in the Riddle of Strider, in Fellowship. Imagine a comparison where Tolkien is the less-distinguished writer, how often does that happen.)
The former example seems characteristic of non-native speech, but is completely understandable also.
"Everything does not need" emphasises everything.
"Not everything needs" emphases not.
It's subtle, and probably subconscious, but it has an effect.
One reason I'm participating in HN is to hone my written english so I appreciate it very much you pointed this out :)
My native tongue (Finnish) is not in the Indo-European language group so I'm occasionally blind to these sort of patterns that are maybe more obvious to speakers of other Indo-European tongues.
I realize how my initial comment might sound bitter as the topic is quite controversial, but I'm more curious than anything.
Seeing such "unusual" placement of pronouns a few times in a short period of time made me wonder what's the deal.
Which, if you're trying to avoid gender stereotypes, leads to awkward he/she, somewhat obviously switch among male and female personas, etc. The typical approach in style guides these days is use singular they. 2nd person got rid of the separate singular and plural pronoun as well so it's not unreasonable.
Culture wars, but a much more gentle version than the current variety. There's definitely an agenda here as it wasn't done in any kind of unthinking organic fashion, especially given long-established norms (which weren't always male). Rather like replacing BC with BCE.
Some future historian will probably look at an AP style book over time and pass judgement on us all. Dunno how it will look. Maybe they'll think of the singular use of 'they' as implying that humans of this era had multiple personalities.
There are people, today, who will fault you for not using 'he' or 'she', since client is singular and 'he' & 'she' (unlike 'they') is too.
If you insist on being gender-neutral, you have to write "he or she" which quicky gets tiresome. Or rewrite without using pronouns, which can also be awkward.
I learned that "he" is gender-neutral if there is no other context, and that's the way I continue to write.
"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up..."
That your English teachers were misinformed prescriptivists isn't the language's fault, and shouldn't be used as a ruler by which you measure the writing of others.
Comments like this are why I love Hacker News.
Why do you think it's supposed to be a "step towards reduction of sexism"?
Don't you? Then what do you think it's for?
I find it refreshing to read, but I also doubt it plays a major role in the 'reduction of sexism'.