This document was mostly written almost a decade ago, and by someone who I think went to a prestigious institution. So the "rules of style" back then aren't what they are today.

You're right, we should update it, though.

> You're right, we should update it, though.

No, you really shouldn't, it's not a real problem. The only people who keep tallies of gender pronouns in documents are internet trolls; don't indulge the trolls. Anyway, switching up pronouns every other time breaks continuity and makes documents harder and painful to read.

No need to keep a tally; in 2018, any document that exclusively uses masculine pronouns for genderless subjects reads as outdated.

When writing on technical topics, the chief concern is to be clear, accurate, and straightforward. Anything that might distract your reader is undesirable. By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership (if you’re writing the documentation for a Do It Yourself Vasectomy Kit, perhaps you get a pass).

Switching up pronouns every other time is a strategy, but it is indeed one that can hurt the readability of a document. This article covers various strategies nicely:

https://www.herodios.com/pronouns.html

(Note that this document was written over 20 years ago, so the “rules of style” when this document was written were roughly the same as they are now)

> any document that exclusively uses masculine pronouns for genderless subjects reads as outdated.

Correct English is never out of style.

Different languages do different things, and that's okay. Some languages apply grammatical gender to more than just sex, e.g. tools, or fruit. That's okay. English uses grammatical gender to distinguish between male, female & neuter objects, and defaults to male when referring to unknown males-or-females. That's okay too. It's all part of the rich panoply of life.

> By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership

I really doubt every woman is distracted by proper grammar. And of course by not using correct English, you distract people who use & prefer it.

Except there is no such thing as “Correct English”.

If we were speaking about eg contemporary France French, you would have a point - there is a governing body decreeing what is correct French and what isn’t.

That is not the case for English.

But even that is besides the point, because “they” as a genderless pronoun has been used for over half a millennia. (William Caxton, 1460: “Each of them should...make themself ready”)

> By referring to “the user” as “he”, you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership (if you’re writing the documentation for a Do It Yourself Vasectomy Kit, perhaps you get a pass).

Do you have any research/data to back this up? I'm a male and I am not distracted when people use "she" (or "he" for that matter). I have never heard anyone in person complain about not being able to focus on an article because they used "he" instead of "she".

> Anything that might distract your reader is undesirable.

Concision is of utmost importance in any language. Many of the examples in your link sacrifice readability and concision for the purpose of avoiding pronouns. What really distracts me is when people use "(s)he", "s/he", "he or she" (oh no -- which one should be first?), or periodically switch between "he" and "she" absolutely everywhere -- all for the purpose of filling a contrived equality quota.

We need an "it" that can be applied to a person.

English has had one for a long time, “they”.

Elitist prescriptivists who wanted English to be Latin because of bizarre linguistic fashion tried to purge it, but never did from general use, and prescriptivism, especially on points that have never aligned with common usage,has fallen out of favor, so there is little reason not to use it now but adherence to a particularly archaic elitism.

It’s useful to have a singular and plural form, required probably not.

There is a user, they are using the system, and that’s about as much as we know about them.

"He" clocks in at two characters, it's a very concise way of referring to an arbitrary person. "The user" takes longer to write and longer to say. Forcing the reader to juggle around "or" conditions (i.e. with "he or she") is even worse and I consider it bad practice. Your readers will thank you for concreteness and brevity.

You’ll notice that my previous post uses “they” as shorthand for “the user”. If your last remaining argument is that “he” is 2 letters and “they” is 4 and thus it’s unequivocally better to always use “he”, it’s not a very good one.

> you’re already distracting roughly 50% of your potential readership

If by 50% you mean 100% of the women having trouble making it through an article with multiple instances of "he" not immediately followed by "or she", that's a pretty bold claim.

I suspect the key factor in people's inability to focus on the central point of the article lies in their political persuasion rather than the shape of their genitalia.

50% refers to the mix of male and female people who get distracted by this; in my experience as a technical writer who would always use “he” when I was less experienced, perhaps 70% of women and 30% of men?

It was certainly one aspect of my writing I got a lot of feedback on. Changing that habit was fairly easy, and has entirely solved the problem.

I’m not sure what’s political about pointing out that “the user” of eg a computer system is not always a “he”, but if you want to bring the conversation there, have fun. If anything, it’s starting to feel to me like people with no interest in technical writing are coming out of the woodwork and making this political!

> 50% refers to the mix of male and female people who get distracted by this; in my experience as a technical writer who would always use “he” when I was less experienced, perhaps 70% of women and 30% of men?

But who were these people? I don't doubt that there exists a population such that half of it complains about lack of gender neutral language in technical writing, but it does not necessarily follow that the same half should also be arbiters of techincal writing style.

> It was certainly one aspect of my writing I got a lot of feedback on. Changing that habit was fairly easy, and has entirely solved the problem. > > I’m not sure what’s political about pointing out that “the user” of eg a computer system is not always a “he”, but if you want to bring the conversation there, have fun.

Back when the convention in English (and various other languages) was that male pronouns were used in mixed or unspecified situation there was no need to point this out, it was given by the convention. Pronouns with masculine grammatical gender being exclusively applicable to men is a recent innovation, without which the problem you are trying to solve wouldn't even exist.

These shifts in meaning can of course happen organically, but I find it very curious that this particular one happened at the same time as the rise of feminism in the 20th century. More extreme examples of the same politicised language is using "womyn" instead of "woman" in order to prevent it from ending in "man".

The only people who consider switching between "he" and "she" in different examples are internet trolls. Obviously, that's not really true, but neither is your snark.

Look: gender-neutral language in technical writing is not that difficult. Most of the time you can rewrite sentences to simply avoid gendered pronouns, e.g., "the successful applicant will use his skills to contribute to the platform team" becomes "the successful applicant's skills will contribute to the platform team."

As for alternating between pronouns, do you think readers are bothered by switching between using male and female names in examples? If you realize that the first example used Bob, the second used Agatha, and the third used William, do you suddenly leap up, scream INTERNET TROLLS GOT TO THEM!, and punch your monitor? No, probably not. So do you do if you see pronouns switching? Really? Again: I'm betting probably not.

I can tell you that as someone who's done technical writing for a half-dozen companies over the last decade or so that I have never heard of readers complaining about alternating pronouns. I have heard of them complaining about documentation that is exclusively male, though, because it turns out that's something some -- not all, maybe not most, but definitely some -- readers will notice and be a little nonplussed by.

> This document was mostly written almost a decade ago, and by someone who I think went to a prestigious institution. So the "rules of style" back then aren't what they are today.

What does the second half of the first sentence have to do with the second sentence?

That prestigious institutions up until the past few years used male pronouns to refer to generic individuals as being "proper English", which this document ostensibly is, and this explains the document's use of them?

Yes, replacing "he/she" with "they" was discouraged because it is plural. Since then gender issues have come to the forefront and this drawback has been deemed less important. "They" is now recommended by most folks, but wasn't the case 12 years ago.

Times change.