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Discussion on: The Language We Use Matters

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gitkearney profile image
Kearney Taaffe

TL;DR
One codes, is not only gender neutral, but the proper English vernacular

Just to reiterate what many have said, I’d prefer S/He to be replaced by “one”

When I was in high school, my English teacher said to never use s/he unless we knew the person was s/he. Otherwise, always use “one”.

This is improper English, “We have a new client, they want us to…” (a is singular, they is plural)

The proper English sentence, “We have a new client, the client wants us to…”

People just get lazy and says “they” cause they don’t talk English good.

English has “hey y’all”. That’s the proper way to greet many people. “Hey guys” is what people from Jersey say.

As to defaulting a dev to a he - the (again) proper English is “who is Eevis? That dev wrote this code, and it was done very well”

(The next sentences never use s/he nor they, but instead give the person a role making the verbs match a singular)

“OK, if we look at what the previous dev did…”.

“Does someone know how to get a hold of Eevis, we need to see if that dev can fix this fast”

What needs to happen is people need to start using proper English and then we wouldn’t have this issue.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

People just get lazy and says “they” cause they don’t talk English good.

This sentence is either accidentally hilarious, or trolling.

Also, 'they' is correct as a singular and has been used as such since the 14th century - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they