On 8/26/15 3:55 AM, Thomas Munro wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> As mentioned upthread, constructive criticism in the form of a patch
>> might serve to move the discussion forward.
>
> Here is a patch showing around 45 suggested changes to get the ball
> rolling. Mostly "he or she", but sometimes other wording, and in one
> case I took a few liberties and introduced <literal>name</> to stand
> in for database objects instead of pronouns which I hope doesn't read
> too clumsily or change the meaning. I didn't cover the release notes.
>
> A big +1 from me for changing this (unintentionally) unwelcoming
> language generally, whatever the new wording.
(Reviewing this for the commit fest ...), I welcome this discussion and
am surprised that you have found so many issues. But I'm not in favor
of this particular patch. I think most people in the discussion were
not in favor of "he or she", and I feel in most of the cases where you
dropped the pronoun in favor of just "the", it loses clarity.
I would be mildly in favor of singular they, but it needs to be woven in
carefully.