RE: Escaping gender usage (was RE: Pet Peeves)

["Brierley, Sean" <Sean -dot- Brierley -at- ipc -dot- com>]

Hi,

I strongly disagree.

I strongly advocate using the second person active present tense.

I strongly advocate avoiding passive construction in modern, U.S.,
non-legal non-academic technical writing.

Cheers,

Sean 

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Suzette Leeming
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 11:17 AM
To: Chris Borokowski
Cc: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Escaping gender usage (was RE: Pet Peeves)

I try to avoid using "you" (too informal) or "user" (too impersonal).

I would change the sentence structure to something like this:

"When a hard drive is formatted, all of the data on it is lost."

I avoid all gender issues this way.

Suzette Leeming
Stouffville, Ontario


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