On 16/06/21 12.06, Junio C Hamano wrote:
+ - If you still need to refer to an example person that is
+ third-person singular, you may resort to "singular they" to avoid
+ "he/she/him/her", e.g.
+
+ A contributor asks their upstream to pull from them.
+ > + Note that this sounds ungrammatical and unnatural to those who
+ learned English as a second language in some parts of the world.
I'm also confused and found that using singular they may sound odd. So
IMO either avoid referring to third-person singular (gendered pronouns)
or write using plural actors. In the case above it should be
`Contributors ask their upstream to pull from them, potentially with
reviews`.
A prime example of rewriting using plural actors is in "doc: avoid using
the gender of other people" patch [1], which said the diff:
diff --git a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
index 55287d72e0..3e215f4d80 100644
--- a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
+++ b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches
@@ -373,9 +373,8 @@ If you like, you can put extra tags at the end:
. `Acked-by:` says that the person who is more familiar with the area
the patch attempts to modify liked the patch.
. `Reviewed-by:`, unlike the other tags, can only be offered by the
- reviewer and means that she is completely satisfied that the patch
- is ready for application. It is usually offered only after a
- detailed review.
+ reviewers themselves when they are completely satisfied with the
+ patch after a detailed analysis.
. `Tested-by:` is used to indicate that the person applied the patch
and found it to have the desired effect.
I'm OK with using they in plural context, but not as singular they.
[1]:
https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210611202819.47077-2-felipe.contreras@xxxxxxxxx/
--
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