From: "Merlin (they/them) Patterson" <merlinpatt+githubgit@xxxxxxxxx> These changes make this documentation more inclusive. Using "male" and "female" as examples of gender is unnecessary. The use of "it" shouldn't be used to refer to people even in an example of what not to use. People are never "it"s. There's no need to specify a person or group of people that learned "they" is only plural. Signed-off-by: Merlin (they/them) Patterson <merlinpatt+githubgit@xxxxxxxxx> --- docs: Update CodingGuidelines to be more inclusive These changes make this documentation more inclusive. * Using "male" and "female" as examples of gender is unnecessary. * The use of "it" shouldn't be used to refer to people even in an example of what not to use. People are never "it"s. * There's no need to specify a person or group of people that learned "they" is only plural. Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-git-1070%2Fmerlinpatt%2Fpatch-1-v1 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-git-1070/merlinpatt/patch-1-v1 Pull-Request: https://github.com/git/git/pull/1070 Documentation/CodingGuidelines | 16 +++++++--------- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines index 711cb9171e0..ffd7fa9c0f4 100644 --- a/Documentation/CodingGuidelines +++ b/Documentation/CodingGuidelines @@ -552,9 +552,9 @@ Writing Documentation: Documentation/SubmittingPatches file). In order to ensure the documentation is inclusive, avoid assuming - that an unspecified example person is male or female, and think - twice before using "he", "him", "she", or "her". Here are some - tips to avoid use of gendered pronouns: + the gender of an example person, and think twice before using + "he", "him", "she", or "her". Here are some tips to avoid the use + of gendered pronouns: - Prefer succinctness and matter-of-factly describing functionality in the abstract. E.g. @@ -566,8 +566,8 @@ Writing Documentation: --short:: Use this to emit output in the short-format. --short:: You can use this to get output in the short-format. --short:: A user who prefers shorter output could.... - --short:: Should a person and/or program want shorter output, he - she/they/it can... + --short:: Should a person and/or program want shorter output, + he/she/they can... This practice often eliminates the need to involve human actors in your description, but it is a good practice regardless of the @@ -586,15 +586,13 @@ Writing Documentation: versions. - If you still need to refer to an example person that is - third-person singular, you may resort to "singular they" to avoid + 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 that "they" is only used for third-person plural, e.g. - those who learn English as a second language in some parts of the - world. + learned that "they" is only used for third-person plural. Every user-visible change should be reflected in the documentation. The same general rule as for code applies -- imitate the existing base-commit: 225bc32a989d7a22fa6addafd4ce7dcd04675dbf -- gitgitgadget