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Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun?
Subject:Gender neutrality and the multiple-personality third-person pronoun? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, "H. Christopher Christner" <cchris -at- toptechwriter -dot- us> Date:Sat, 07 Jan 2006 09:46:53 -0500
H. Christopher Christner reports: <<"Police hope the person who fired
the shot will turn themselves in to authorities." Do police think the
shooter has multiple personalities?>>
Apparently, since they start with the assumption that there's one
shooter and end with plural selves. The simplest (not the best)
solution is "themself". Me, I'd have written "Police hope that whoever
fired the shot will surrender to authorities". That's a standard
idiomatic phrase in English in this context, and moreover, it avoids
the awkwardness that often comes with phrasal verbs. "What do you mean
'they'll turn themselves into authorities'. Authorities on what,
sociopathic behavior? Seems like there's no 'turning into' required."
Since this is a list about technical communication, it's worth noting
that phrasal verbs are often more idiomatic than more direct
equivalents, and pose a particular problem to readers who aren't
familiar with the idiom. They're thus best avoided. Journalism, of
course, plays by different rules.
<<Just for kicks, I checked Google for articles that include the terms
"the person who" and "turn themselves in" and got nearly 700 hits.
That's a lot of writers who don't care about being clearly understood>>
Oddly enough, using "themself" instead turns up even fewer hits. Not
sure whether this is a good thing (i.e., they used more direct wording)
or a bad thing.
<<Rewriting the sentence (the usual workaround) isn't easy in this
case. At least I can't come up with one that doesn't have "himself",
"herself" or "him or herself" in it.>>
Sure it is. See above. <g> There, the answer is to focus on the action
and choose an appropriate verb.
Not really. Most cases you can achieve this goal by remembering that
you're not trying to describe the user, and thus don't need to use a
pronoun. Focusing on the situation rather than replacing the person
with a pronoun works just fine; in technical communication, that means
focus on the task rather than the user. If you need to focus on the
user, go with imperative voice (for instructions or commands) and
plural accord (since you're talking about all users, not just one
person).
As a general rule, if you find yourself struggling to write something
in our field using gender-netural pronouns, it's a strong hint that
you're focusing on the wrong thing.
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