We as technical nerds often forget how people actually interact with technology and assume way too much attention, familiarity and ability to understand UI patterns.
We often think of accessibility in terms of screen readers, but that’s just a fraction of the story…
Add varied devices, slow connections, very bad performance etc.
I’m craving for things like simplicity, performance, robustness and accessibility.
This looks like a holistic, carefully crafted design system. I’m looking forward to study it.
I'm always a bit surprised when I see some e.g. tech conferences still insisting on title as a mandatory field (or really asking at all). It's not just the gender and the marital status but some people attach a lot of significance to all manner of honorifics.
When I last registered for some conference put on by The Economist, it must have had 25 titles to choose from including a whole bunch of aristocratic and clergy-related titles.
Seems a lot easier just not to bother today.
[1] Well, personally I think that's silly too. But it's a question of degree.
I agree with the recommendation that it's best just to have a big name field and allow users to be "Dr. Firstname Lastname" if they want that, or "Firstname Lastname" if they don't want a title, or "Englishname Surname Givename" if they want that.
The push-back usually becomes that you can't trivially parse it a single name field later to use part of the name conversationally as if you know the person closely and send them spam with "Hey <nickname>, we haven't heard from you in a while, did you know that we now offer blah?". Instead, be honest, if you can't even take the time to understand the name syntax of an entire country, you don't know that user closely.
The opposite reason being that she desires advances? Unless you are implying an open marriage, that doesn’t sound right. Can you clarify what you mean?
What is your full name?
Ner D. P. Onx, BS DDS LCSW
How would you like to be addressed?
Mr. OnxNobody said society was rational.
Weird thing to look over in a thread about internationalization
French has that gendered structure too, with workarounds to manage uncertainty.
"Todes"
Please stop.
In some languages in order to say anything about anything you have to apply either the masculine or feminine form of the verbs and adjectives, so there's no way around picking one of the two, so if you don't know, you must guess or assume.
And if we look at languages with three grammatical genders, for some of them the neutral option is exclusive to inanimate objects, and using these neutral-gender forms of verbs and adjectives involving any person is explicitly insultingly dehumanizing, you wouldn't even use it to refer to an animal, much less to any person unless you want to make a point of intentionally disrespecting them as "it", saying that they are not worthy to be considered a person. In these languages[1] we do see the neutral gender option applied towards nonbinary and transgender people, but it's done by transphobes as a way of dehumanizing them in conversations.
In such languages usually the proper way to behave if you don't know the gender or if that's a mixed gender group is to default to masculine grammatical gender; because there's no polite way to avoid choosing; and, I might guess that there's also probably some aspect that historical patriarchal social reasons it might have been traditionally considered that misgendering someone male-to-female is more offensive than misgendering someone female-to-male, so that's how that default might have come to be.
[1] edit - I know about some of these languages, I'm not asserting that this applies for all such languages, perhaps there are some of them where the social norms are different, it's very hard to generalize globally.
In any case, I understand your point about there not being many options for gendered pronouns in some languages, but you're also assuming that there aren't movements to change that. French is a good example where even though its heavily gendered, things are evolving to the point that Le Robert even includes 'iel' as a pronom personnel [1]. Sure its use is contentious, but so are gendered pronouns even in English are still contentious for some people, but it exists and people do use it.
No, I explicitly did not mention pronouns, my post was about all the language groups where merely changing pronouns is barely scratching the surface as core grammar features rely on grammatical gender. Like, no offense intended, but French is not an example of a "heavily gendered language" - I'd consider French on the very low end of the grammatical gender complexity scale, where indeed suggestions such as yours might be plausible. For example, consider Hebrew or Slavic languages which have verbs and adjectives denoting the gender of the subject/object. Consider grammatical gender in Hindi or Welsh. And I'm not even talking about more complicated systems like you might see in Bantu languages.
> Dear <usually title> <usually last name>,
The sw dev looked up a bunch of titles - Sir, Dame, Lord, Duke, Earl, Baron, Prince, Princess, Reverend, Bishop... - and decided the DB field could be 8 letters.
Of course it broke for the first Archbishop.
Yeah, probably. I sometimes will list degrees in a longer bio but that's mostly because it may turn out I went to school with someone. They're not very relevant to anything I'd be talking about at a conference. I'd never put degrees and class years next to my name unless it were an alumni thing.
As I say, PhDs in a non-academia setting are what you see something of a split on with some people displaying them liberally and others never mentioning them.
Lots of people (this will seem ridiculous to anyone who’s worked with academics, but) seem to mix up PhD’s, lecturers, and don’t know about the grueling path from there to full-on tenured professor.
Like what? Doesn't that argument work the other way around, that lots of people have equivalent or higher degrees than medicos, but only the latter are called doctors at their place of work?
All I can think is things like EngD, but I'd think those holders are as likely as PhDs to use the 'Doctor' from it, it's really just the term the university happened to use in awarding it.
I have no particular stake in the question though. Totally understand that people are proud of their achievement.
I just meant that I can't think of anything else at that level that we don't use (sometimes/to the same not-100% extent) an honourific for. In many countries (not North America I know) medicine is a lesser qualification (Bachelor of each Medicine & Surgery, MBBS or BMBS) but we still use it, so it seemed to me the argument up thread works there (Masters aren't called doctors) but not as far as I can think of anything at PhD level?
>Yeah certainly, and even at university most lecturers I had I think were 'just call me (first name)'.
Of course not all lecturers have doctorates and you also get into the very academia "Professor" sensitivity.
Good for them. In reality, it's not just a degree, it's the final degree.
It's the degree you start working towards only after you get just a degree.
Having been yelled at by colleagues for opting to not include Dr. on my own freaking business cards - here here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/titles-included-i...
My personal favourite is if you change your first name to “Sir” and you are not actually a “Knight”, then you get the note “THE REFERENCE TO SIR IS TO THE HOLDER’S NAME AND NOT TO THE HOLDER’S TITLE” printed in your passport.
Context: I wanted “Dr.” to be added to my passport.
I do wonder what would happen if I used a tile that was not used in the UK.
If you set your title to "Graf" in the passport form:
> By Royal Warrant of 27 April 1932, the use in England and Wales of foreign titles of nobility was discontinued.
> You must include the observation: THE HOLDER IS ALSO KNOWN AS (foreign title).
If you instead set your given name to "Graf", these instructions would not apply, as you are not claiming it's your title. Nor would it be evident to the passport office or any other English speaker that your given name implied a title, so provided your supporting documents corroborate that "Graf" is your given name, they'd issue a passport in that name.
However, if you used not "Graf", but a title recognised in the English language:
> A person may call themselves any name they want, as long as it is not for fraudulent purposes
> You may receive an application supported by documents (for example, a birth certificate or a change of name deed) that shows a customer is using a name that includes a description of a title (for example, Lord, Princess, Earl or Baron as a forename).
> You must include the observation: THE REFERENCE TO (description of title) IS TO THE HOLDER’S NAME AND NOT TO THE HOLDER’S TITLE.
> "Use single or multiple fields depending on your user’s needs. Not everyone’s name fits the first-name, last-name format. Using multiple name fields mean there’s more risk that a person’s name will not fit the format you’ve chosen and that it is entered incorrectly."
and
> "Avoid asking users for their title. It’s extra work for them and you’re asking them to potentially reveal their gender and marital status, which they may not want to do."
and
> "If your service stores personal information, you should allow users to update their details, including their name. Allowing users to change their name helps your service respect their personal identity. It also means they can continue using your service without having to start over. People change their name for many reasons. For example, because of a change in marital status, family situation or gender. Avoid making it hard for users to change their name. As well as causing them distress, it may make them reluctant to use your service."
[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/names/