I didn't want to participate in this discussion, but I will, probably for the following reasons:

- I'm French

- I bought a copy of Strunk & White during my first trip to the US, in 1990, in a desperate attempt to improve my english writing style.

- I can't say it changed my life, but I found the advice it contains useful - and, as noted by others, not just for english speakers.

- For this reason, I have some fondness for this book (I know it has its limitations too...).

- I'm puzzled by how some people might equate S&W with white supremacy.

I was still puzzled, as many others in this thread, until I googled for it, and found some reference to this story:

His former executive assistant, Cassie Jones, who is black, quit shortly after he gave her a gift she considered insulting, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

In November, after she had spent four months working for him, Mr. Lynch called Ms. Jones into his office and handed her “The Elements of Style,” a guide to standard English usage by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Mr. Lynch said he thought she could benefit from it.

With its suggestion that her own language skills were lacking, the gift struck Ms. Jones as a microaggression, the people said. A few days later, she quit. Before leaving the headquarters at 1 World Trade in Lower Manhattan, she placed the book on his desk.

Mr. Lynch said he hadn’t meant to insult Ms. Jones, who declined to comment for this article. “I really only had the intention — like every time I’ve given it before — for it to be a helpful resource, as it has been for me,” he said. “I still use it today. I’m really sorry if she interpreted it that way.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/business/media/conde-nast-racial.html

So I guess this gives some context to this discussion.

Additional personal remark: I have many times in my professional life given or been given a book about specific work-related topics when I or the other party thought that one could benefit from it in terms of useful work-related skill acquisition. I find it quite hard to understand how someone would reject such a gift and take it as a reason to resign (unless of course there were other things going on in this company, in which case, why bring the focus on S&W ?).

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 3:29 PM Kyle Stanley <aeros167@gmail.com> wrote:

> Basically, it feels like we were lied to. And if that wasn't bad enough, to see that Guido accepted that vitriolic commit message and merged it in ... it makes me embarrassed to be a Python supporter.

Only Guido could attest to this, but as someone who spoke in support of the change, I personally missed the commit message until attention was drawn to it in the python-ideas thread. When reviewing PRs, I'll admit that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the individual commit messages (particularly extended descriptions); most of my attention is on the actual changes made. So, perhaps he did the same?

Either way, I don't think I would go as far as to say that it embarrasses me as a Python contributor. That being said, it did very much feel like it went in a completely different direction than the PR description, and I'm uncomfortable with it as well for that reason. So, my vote would be to amend the commit message based on the description of the PR and proposal made in python-ideas.

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 8:53 AM Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:
On 06/30/2020 05:03 AM, Łukasz Langa wrote:
>
>> On 30 Jun 2020, at 12:44, Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us <mailto:ethan@stoneleaf.us>> wrote:
>>
>> Of course I don't know if Keara or Guido knew any of this, but it certainly feels to me that the commit message is ostracizing an entire family line because they had the misfortune to have the wrong last name. In fact, it seems like Strunk & White is making changes to be inclusive in its advice -- exactly what I would have thought we wanted on our side ("our side" being the diverse and welcoming side).
>
> In any case, saying that Keara and Guido mistook the family name of one of the authors for skin color feels derogatory.

My apologies, that was not my intent. As I said, I never knew what it was until today (er, yesterday now).

> The commit message clearly is controversial but when you say the change itself was unnecessary, consider that English is now a language predominantly used outside of USA and Great Britain. Relaxing the recommendation to use S & L Standard English in the CPython codebase isn't problematic in this sense. That recommendation was largely ignored anyway, as core developer voices in the other threads already admitted. So, chaos won't ensue. We still want to maintain consistency, as PEP 8 recommends. I don't think you have to worry now about seeing organization and organisation in the same docstring.

Well, that wouldn't bother me -- as often as not I use non-US-English spellings; I just appreciate if it's a correct spelling /somewhere/.

>> That's what it felt like: betrayal.
>
> This entire section of your message is confusing to me. Mind explaining? How does a commit message equate stabbing somebody who helped you? What is being betrayed in this commit?

The original request for the change had absolutely no hint that the current text was racist in any way; then we find out that, apparently, we've been harboring white supremacist ideals by prescribing when to use apostrophes and commas? That commit message (not the commit itself) took what should have been a simple change and turned into a platform for political grandstanding of the worst kind:

- False, as far as I can tell (until given confirming examples from the S&W text)
- Only colored people are mentioned (and other /native English speakers/)
- Zero mention of non-native English speakers

Basically, it feels like we were lied to. And if that wasn't bad enough, to see that Guido accepted that vitriolic commit message and merged it in ... it makes me embarrassed to be a Python supporter.

--
~Ethan~
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