[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream (original) (raw)

Westley Martínez anikom15 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 5 01:10:29 CET 2011

On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 03:27 +1100, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

Westley Martínez wrote: > On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 00:54 -0800, Aaron DeVore wrote: >> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Kerrick Staley <mail at kerrickstaley.com> wrote: >>> That way, if the sysadmin does decide to replace the installed "python" file, he can do so without inadvertently deleting the previously installed binary. >> Nit pick: Change "he" to "they" to be gender neutral. > > Nit pick: Change "they" to "he" to be grammatically correct. If we > really have to be gender neutral, change "he" to "he or she".

Actually, that's a hyper-correction imposed by grammarians in the 18th century who were overly influenced by Latin. The use of "they" as a generic singular and indeterminate pronoun in written English goes back at least to Chaucer in the 14th century, and very likely as long back as before English was English, and remains in common use today. Despite the distaste for it among (mostly American) grammarians, it is linguistically sound and widely accepted in most of the English-speaking world, particularly England itself. The use of singular they is widespread, natural, and grammatically correct. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-the2.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularthey http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archivs/005423.html But for the sake of not upsetting our nuclear-armed cousins on the wrong side of the Atlantic wink, perhaps the sentence could be reworded to refer to system administrators plural, and thus satisfy everyone? "That way, if sysadmins decide to replace the installed "python" file, they can do so without inadvertently deleting the previously installed binary."

All right I have to reply to all these "singular they" remarks. Just because the singular they has been used for a long time doesn't make it right. It sounds unnatural, at least to me, and I've always been taught to use "he or she" which I despise. So all my life I've used the generic "he". Anyways, I remember reading somewhere that for Python Strunk and White apply, and neither Strunk nor White like singular theys.

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