Bug Skill message says "his" instead of "their"

[Syllerias]

I hope this is the right place to put this, but when the message for Dreadknight's darkscythe appears it says "has coated his weapons with a deadly poison" when the server typically uses the gender neutral pronoun "they"

 

[Kainzo]

I hope this is the right place to put this, but when the message for Dreadknight's darkscythe appears it says "has coated his weapons with a deadly poison" when the server typically uses the gender neutral pronoun "they"

@0xNaomi
Care to fix?

 

[Irishman81]

@0xNaomi
Care to fix?

I fixed it

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

I fixed it in the other 22 places plus fixed those two annoying possessive its masquerading as contractions.

 

[Paul_Bakken]

I hate to be "that guy," but plural possessives are NOT a gender neutral stand-in for third person singular possessives.

I realize that people are trying to be sensitive and accommodating, but using "their" in the place of "his," "her," or " its" just sounds uneducated.

Instead, why not write those messages so that they do not require gender identification at all? Such as, "X has coated a weapon with poison."

Remember, kids: when de-genderizing third person singular possessives, use the indefinite article instead of the third person plural possessive! Otherwise, you are just trying to force collectivization on an unsuspecting proletariat, which probably makes you a filthy Communist or something.

 

[0xNaomi]

I hate to be "that guy," but plural possessives are NOT a gender neutral stand-in for third person singular possessives.

I realize that people are trying to be sensitive and accommodating, but using "their" in the place of "his," "her," or " its" just sounds uneducated.

Instead, why not write those messages so that they do not require gender identification at all? Such as, "X has coated a weapon with poison."

Remember, kids: when de-genderizing third person singular possessives, use the indefinite article instead of the third person plural possessive! Otherwise, you are just trying to force collectivization on an unsuspecting proletariat, which probably makes you a filthy Communist or something.

Mmk, let's try Gills:
"X has grown a set of gills!" Already what it is, great.
"X has lost his gills!" Already what it is, not great.

"X has lost a set of gills!" Taking your suggestion into account, doesn't work too well. Fairly certain there's only one set of gills to be had.
"X has lost their gills!" Doesn't make it sound horribly awkward, great.

We're not a university here, nor does all text have to be perfect. See the multiple death messages that have typos in them.

 

[Paul_Bakken]

"X no longer has gills." This is not difficult.

...and since I am currently grumpy and feeling argumentative:

Actually, we ARE acting like a university here. Out in the real world, most people don't bother getting uptight about the conventional use of singular male pronouns as a generic. Those who do are perfectly free to substitute "her" instead, and that's fine. In professional environments, a common convention that has evolved is that people just use the pronouns that match the speaker's own gender. And that, too, is fine. The listeners somehow manage to wrap their heads around the fact that, just because someone may have said "his" or "her," it doesn't imply that the hypothetical subject of the sentence possesses a given set of genetalia.

Ugh. Witchy or someone else, please post a txt dump of all the messages either in this thread or as a PM to me. I'd be happy to fix them.

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

I hate to be "that guy," but plural possessives are NOT a gender neutral stand-in for third person singular possessives.

I realize that people are trying to be sensitive and accommodating, but using "their" in the place of "his," "her," or " its" just sounds uneducated.

Instead, why not write those messages so that they do not require gender identification at all? Such as, "X has coated a weapon with poison."

Remember, kids: when de-genderizing third person singular possessives, use the indefinite article instead of the third person plural possessive! Otherwise, you are just trying to force collectivization on an unsuspecting proletariat, which probably makes you a filthy Communist or something.

Well, I might be a kid at heart, but I've also been a technical editor for the last 20 years.

And I well and truly support the singular they.

Chaucer used it, Shakespeare used it...

It's a fallacy to think that just because someone stuck something in a dictionary or grammar text that that makes it "right", and right for all time. Language is for human expression, and it is alive and constantly evolving to meet the needs of the people using it.

Yeah, when I was growing up I understood "they" as being plural and so I always twitch when I see it used in the singular. But I haven't found a better way yet of handling the situations where the singular they comes into play, so I'm sticking with it.

On a related topic, one of the sayings I've developed since hanging out chatting on the web in various forums is this: Communication is more important than spelling. And I guess that goes for grammar too, I reckon.