RE: Get Offended, really.

["Humbird, LenX" <lenx -dot- humbird -at- intel -dot- com>]

Though it's a lofty goal in documentation: we can't prevent offending all
the people all the time. If we change the wording so as not to offend one
group of people, we risk offending another. 

The innuendoes and connotations in our language aren't going to diminish.
Therefore, if we are to do our job of gingery side-stepping them in our
documentation without drawing attention away from the subject matter, we
should all be fully educated as to these pitfalls. I believe this is a good
thread to begin discussing all possible innuendoes we should be aware of,
whether they may be sexual, racial, economical, and ecological, whatever. 

"Mounting a hard drive" and describing "male" and "female" connectors is
about as sterile and generic as it gets. Yet we are forced to take the
politically correct stand of changing these terms so as to offend people who
aren't getting any. 

How can we make connectors non-sexual when they are the epitome of
sexuality? If it weren't for sex, we'd never have figured out how to connect
and disconnect things at will and without the use of rope or duct tape. Or
the lowly spiral screw, invented around 1 BC by Archimedes of Syracuse. Talk
about kinky. 

What do these have to do with technical writing? They are the very things
you should consider not mentioning in writing, lest someone in your audience
becomes offended. 

Since there's always going to be a group that will take offense to
something, maybe we should be "fair" as to which group(s) are going to get
nailed by our prose - so as to be non-discriminatory when it comes to being
offensive. I suggest that we rotate the offending target audience on a
sentence-by-sentence basis. For example, the 1st sentence of a chapter would
offend short people, the 2nd through 8th offends those with specific
alternate sexual lifestyles, 9th for virgins, 10th for homophobes, 11th for
people in high places, 12th specifically for Bill Gates, the teens for
people with various impairments, twenties for specific races, and so-on.
With practice, you'll be able to spread the "unintentional offenses" in all
directions in no time! 

And if you've really read this far in my drivel, please note that this was
totally an exercise in absurdity. I hope you got the humor in it. As to
Philip's instructional dilemma, if sterile and generic is going to offend,
then realize that you're going to offend no matter how you rewrite it. I say
that if it's going to offend, you might as well be accurate, specific and
get personal: "Mount that big hard drive, baby." 

Len


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philip Sharman [mailto:psharman -at- verity -dot- com]
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 4:00 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: Get Offended
> 
> 
> 
> >Worst example I've encountered was a gov't purchasing agent 
> who found the
> >terms 'male' and 'female' for describing connectors on 
> computer cables
> >offensive.
> 
> On that theme ... a company I worked for once had to stop 
> referring to 
> "mounting a drive" because some customers took that the wrong 
> way. (It 
> makes one wonder exactly what they pictured when they heard 
> that phrase, 
> doesn't it?)
> 
>          Philip.