Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] CodingGuidelines: recommend singular they

On 6/16/2021 1:06 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

FWIW, I am not happy with this version for that reason, either.

I wonder if replacing the first two bullet points ("Removing" and
"If you need to talk about") above with what was added to the
CodingGuidelines by the "succinct matter-of-factly description" in

https://lore.kernel.org/git/87a6nz2fda.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com/ (local)

would be sufficient.

So, here is what I plan to queue on top of these four patches to
replace my "not even draft" garbage with what you wrote, with a bit
of copyediting.

Comments?

...

+  - Prefer succinctness and matter-of-factly describing functionality
+    in the abstract.  E.g.
+
+     --short:: Emit output in the short-format.
+
+    and avoid something like these overly verbose alternatives:
+
+     --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...
+
+    This practice often eliminates the need to involve human actors in
+    your description, but it is a good practice regardless of the
+    avoidance of gendered pronouns.

I wasn't a huge fan of this "example first" approach, but you did
a good job of tying it to the purpose and the rest of the
recommendations.

+  - When it becomes awkward to stick to this style, prefer "you" when
+    addressing the the hypothetical user, and possibly "we" when
+    discussing how the program might react to the user.  E.g.
+
+      You can use this option instead of --xyz, but we might remove
+      support for it in future versions.
+
+    while keeping in mind that you can probably be less verbose, e.g.
+
+      Use this instead of --xyz. This option might be removed in future
+      versions.
+
+  - 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.

This version looks good to me. It is probably worth adding Ævar in
a Co-authored-by line.

Thanks,
-Stolee