Need cleanup advice for multiline string

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:40:03 +0200, Stefan Behnel wrote:

>> Or you could enter the 21 century and understand that "guys" has become
>> a generic term for people of any sex.
> 
> Is that true for everyone who understands and/or writes English? In that
> case, I'm fine with your above statement. Otherwise, I'd wonder who you
> meant with the term "cultural chauvinism". So far, I only learned that
> most North-American English native speakers use that term in the way you
> refer to. That doesn't even get you close to the majority of English
> speakers.

If you read the entire thread, you'd see that we've already discussed the 
issue of "guys" for mixed sex groups and females. In fact, as I'd already 
said, I'm one of those old fashioned guys who still gets surprised when 
women refer to themselves as guys, but I'm learning to keep up with the 
times. I'm Australian, not North American, and the British author Michael 
Quinion, one of the researchers for the Oxford Dictionary, also states 
that "guys" now refers to both men and women:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-guy1.htm

When "guys" can refer to either sex in English, American, Canadian and 
Australian English, I think it should be pretty uncontroversial to treat 
it as standard now.



-- 
Steven