It is actually relevant in this case because the text portraits defensive communication as bad, and this editing stance fits the bill. In fact the current state of political speech in the west puts everyone in defense, such as with this kind of crap.
Anyway a great read, it applies to various contexts, from work and family to politics and online discourse.
I call this the 'everything is related to everything somehow' truism - sure, you can make the case for almost any comment or submission but it's not some universal beat-the-forum-conventions cheat code. Could one write some sort of reasonable comment critiquing this edit? Maybe. But generic, reflexive harumphing is not that and tends to trash threads which is one of the many reasons it's discouraged.
There are several uses of the phrases "he or she" and "himself or herself" in the linked text. I suspect it originally said "he" and "himself". Which would have made sense in a mostly-male audience (the Navy at the time).
It has not happened in every instance. Probably for readability, e.g. consider how dense this paragraph would become:
> The person who behaves defensively, even though he or she also gives some attention to the common task, devotes an appreciable portion of energy to defending himself or herself. Besides talking about the topic, he thinks about how he appears to others, how he may be seen more favorably, how he may win, dominate, impress or escape punishment, and/or how he may avoid or mitigate a perceived attack.
> Which would have made sense in a mostly-male audience (the Navy at the time).
Also, use the male form for when you meant both men and women was at that time the prescribed grammatical "style" (as in "A Chicago Manual of Style").
Personally I think just switching, or using "she" consistently, is just as good:
"The person who behaves defensively, even though she also gives some attention to the common task..."
If you really want to be generic, I think using them/they is a much better option:
"The person who behaves defensively, even though they also give some attention to the common task, devotes an appreciable portion of energy to defending themselves. Besides talking about the topic, they think about how they appear to others, how they may be seen more favorably, how they may win..."
People will complain that this is "wrong", but:
1. As you say, the prescription to use "he or she" is clumsy and awkward.
2. It's been in use in English since the 1400s, and has been used in published works by authors like Lord Byron and Jane Austen [1].
It's convenient and well-established; I don't see any reason to continue forbidding it in formal writing.
> Also, use the male form for when you meant both men and women was at that time the prescribed grammatical "style" (as in "A Chicago Manual of Style").
This was still taught in US primary and secondary schools through at least the early '00s.
I think most such "people" (those who oppose the use of singular they) would limit their opposition to a particular subset of usage, which is pointed out in the Wikipedia article you linked to as follows:
> In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged
I doubt they'd be opposed to the centuries-old usage being proposed in this thread, which Wikipedia mentions like so:
The closest thing that I could find to a freely available unedited version of the text is in Etc: A Review of General Semantics, 1965-06: Volume 22 Issue 2.
The he-or-she changes are numerous but insignificant (not consistently done though), but some of the changes to word choices I wouldn't have made (and some are clear errors, e.g. debating -> doubting), and three paragraphs have gone missing (don't know if they got dropped while transcribing into the web page, or were made by the original author at some point).
Interesting work. I appreciate this. It would be interesting to compare the original article with the one that appears in the so-called “Trust” book that the OP refers to and derives their own version from.
I’m even less keen on OP’s changes than before. They might as well have written a review of it or an inspired work of their own than render the integrity of the text questionable, even to the slightest extent.
I'm not sure what the point of your comment is. Are you surprised that this happened? Is this a value judgement? Would like you discuss the merit of this change?
Or are you just being reactonary because someone mentioned the word gender?
The point of my comment was to express surprise at the hubris of someone editing the dead for their own private political reasons, and to find out more about this practice
The point is that the text is not authentic. How do we know that the "reduced references", which basically means that the editor removed what he disliked for his own arbitrary and personal reasons, did not affect the meaning of the text?
I agree that this is an odd choice. It hasn't been edited all that well, so the "person" who is "he or she" becomes a "he" in the next sentence. More than that, there's a clumsy instance of find-replace, "person-is-an-object-study", where the intention of the author was almost certainly "humanity-is-an-object-study".
On a personal level, I think editing old language for political correctness smacks of revisionism, but if such language must be edited, then the editing should at least preserve the meaning of the original.
If you do a search for "person-is-an-object-study" it seems to be a phrase from the original author (appearing in other quoted material that hasn't edited "he" to "he or she")
The original journal article (just posted another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139081) had "person-is-an-object-of-study" which makes more sense. And this is also the only version you find quoted if you search in Google Books; all quotes of the other material are probably propagating errors from some earlier transcription error (that precedes the he-or-she).
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It is actually relevant in this case because the text portraits defensive communication as bad, and this editing stance fits the bill. In fact the current state of political speech in the west puts everyone in defense, such as with this kind of crap.
Anyway a great read, it applies to various contexts, from work and family to politics and online discourse.
It is actually relevant
I call this the 'everything is related to everything somehow' truism - sure, you can make the case for almost any comment or submission but it's not some universal beat-the-forum-conventions cheat code. Could one write some sort of reasonable comment critiquing this edit? Maybe. But generic, reflexive harumphing is not that and tends to trash threads which is one of the many reasons it's discouraged.
3 replies →
There are several uses of the phrases "he or she" and "himself or herself" in the linked text. I suspect it originally said "he" and "himself". Which would have made sense in a mostly-male audience (the Navy at the time).
It has not happened in every instance. Probably for readability, e.g. consider how dense this paragraph would become:
> The person who behaves defensively, even though he or she also gives some attention to the common task, devotes an appreciable portion of energy to defending himself or herself. Besides talking about the topic, he thinks about how he appears to others, how he may be seen more favorably, how he may win, dominate, impress or escape punishment, and/or how he may avoid or mitigate a perceived attack.
> Which would have made sense in a mostly-male audience (the Navy at the time).
Also, use the male form for when you meant both men and women was at that time the prescribed grammatical "style" (as in "A Chicago Manual of Style").
Personally I think just switching, or using "she" consistently, is just as good:
"The person who behaves defensively, even though she also gives some attention to the common task..."
If you really want to be generic, I think using them/they is a much better option:
"The person who behaves defensively, even though they also give some attention to the common task, devotes an appreciable portion of energy to defending themselves. Besides talking about the topic, they think about how they appear to others, how they may be seen more favorably, how they may win..."
People will complain that this is "wrong", but:
1. As you say, the prescription to use "he or she" is clumsy and awkward.
2. It's been in use in English since the 1400s, and has been used in published works by authors like Lord Byron and Jane Austen [1].
It's convenient and well-established; I don't see any reason to continue forbidding it in formal writing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
> using "she" consistently good
Just for clarification: What if the article has a negative bias, i.e. an article about criminals, do you still suggest using "she"?
1 reply →
Totally agree that "they" strikes a good balance of readability and inclusivity.
> Also, use the male form for when you meant both men and women was at that time the prescribed grammatical "style" (as in "A Chicago Manual of Style").
This was still taught in US primary and secondary schools through at least the early '00s.
> People will complain that this is "wrong"
I think most such "people" (those who oppose the use of singular they) would limit their opposition to a particular subset of usage, which is pointed out in the Wikipedia article you linked to as follows:
> In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged
I doubt they'd be opposed to the centuries-old usage being proposed in this thread, which Wikipedia mentions like so:
> to refer to an unknown person
But who knows!
The closest thing that I could find to a freely available unedited version of the text is in Etc: A Review of General Semantics, 1965-06: Volume 22 Issue 2.
https://archive.org/details/sim_et-cetera_1965-06_22_2/page/...
I know that HN tolerates archive.is links...not so sure about shadow libraries. But if you know where to look for it, it's available for download.
For what it's worth, I manually compared the original journal article (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1961.tb00344.x obtained via sci-hub) against the transcribed version in the OP, and the diffs are here: https://www.diffchecker.com/CZRjh0fb/ or https://www.jstoolset.com/diff/3c9ff80979b6e808 (or in case both go down: https://gist.github.com/shreevatsa/0d1aa90e73a7bfbe12e4b4888...)
The he-or-she changes are numerous but insignificant (not consistently done though), but some of the changes to word choices I wouldn't have made (and some are clear errors, e.g. debating -> doubting), and three paragraphs have gone missing (don't know if they got dropped while transcribing into the web page, or were made by the original author at some point).
Interesting work. I appreciate this. It would be interesting to compare the original article with the one that appears in the so-called “Trust” book that the OP refers to and derives their own version from.
I’m even less keen on OP’s changes than before. They might as well have written a review of it or an inspired work of their own than render the integrity of the text questionable, even to the slightest extent.
1 reply →
I'm not sure what the point of your comment is. Are you surprised that this happened? Is this a value judgement? Would like you discuss the merit of this change?
Or are you just being reactonary because someone mentioned the word gender?
I'm pretty sure the editor was the one being "reactonary" (reactionary) editing a 63 year old article.
It is ironic though considering the topic of the document. Every line in it and the comments here are gold it's amazing to see.
The point of my comment was to express surprise at the hubris of someone editing the dead for their own private political reasons, and to find out more about this practice
To be fair I'm the exact opposite of "reactionary", I'm all for inclusive language, but I still find it an odd choice.
The point is that the text is not authentic. How do we know that the "reduced references", which basically means that the editor removed what he disliked for his own arbitrary and personal reasons, did not affect the meaning of the text?
I agree that this is an odd choice. It hasn't been edited all that well, so the "person" who is "he or she" becomes a "he" in the next sentence. More than that, there's a clumsy instance of find-replace, "person-is-an-object-study", where the intention of the author was almost certainly "humanity-is-an-object-study".
On a personal level, I think editing old language for political correctness smacks of revisionism, but if such language must be edited, then the editing should at least preserve the meaning of the original.
If you do a search for "person-is-an-object-study" it seems to be a phrase from the original author (appearing in other quoted material that hasn't edited "he" to "he or she")
The original journal article (just posted another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42139081) had "person-is-an-object-of-study" which makes more sense. And this is also the only version you find quoted if you search in Google Books; all quotes of the other material are probably propagating errors from some earlier transcription error (that precedes the he-or-she).
Why not?