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Subject:Re: Gender Bias In Re Apostrophes Within Pronouns From:Beryl Doane <BDoane -at- ENGPO -dot- MSMAILGW -dot- INTERMEC -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 15 Dec 1995 08:49:00 PST
>From: TECHWR-L
>To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
>Subject: Gender Bias In Re Apostrophes Within Pronouns
>Date: Tuesday, December 12, 1995 11:02PM
>Just kidding.
>But seriously, folks....will someone please start a mailing list about
>grammar, and punctuation, and other politically interesting topics so we
can
>focus on _technical_ writing again?
>Kendall Scott
---------------------------------------
Sorry for broadcasting this, but there was no individual reply address. (And
maybe not so sorry).
Kendall,
You miss the point. Gender bias IS part of Technical Writing.
Technical communicators are nothing without an audience. Ignoring that 50%
of your audience is female is ignoring 50% of your audience. Would you
purposefully write a System manual that is targetted for administrators and
operators, then write it only at the adminstrator level, using terms and
phrases that the adminstrators understand but not the operators? You might,
but the consequences would be great. As a contractor, your contract
certainly would NOT be renewed.
You cannot dismiss the issue of gender bias by simply calling it irrelevent
to technical writing.
Ditto for grammar and punctuation. Just because your subject and audience
are "technical" does not mean that you can ignore basic "writing" skills.
If you are not interested in the discussions, delete the messages with the
offending subject heading. You would not want to actually *learn* something
useful by reading them, anyway. (sarcasm fully intended)
=====>bd
=====>Beryl Doane bdoane -at- intermec -dot- com
=====>The opinions expressed are fully my own.
