[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream

[Steven D'Aprano]

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/Singular_they
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."



-- 
Steven