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Comment on I have resigned from all roles in rustlang, effective immediatelyparent

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I noticed this when I was writing it and tried to use names rather than pronouns as much as possible. I actually use “their” all the time for everyone, I wasn’t aware that JT requests it in their Twitter profile. About fifteen years ago, when I first heard about gender-neutral pronouns, the objection at the time was “it’s harder to write and more confusing”. I started doing it as a challenge to see if it really was hard or not. In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations).

In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations).

This may be because I am French and we do not "reuse" pronouns (in the sense that "their" always refers to a group). I know however that "their" use in single form has a long history in English and I therefore try to use "their" like you most of the time when it helps to generalize.

We have new constructs in French such as iel (il + elle = he + she) which is used by some and by others not (and forbidden (or very strongly discouraged, I do not remember) in national education). I do not know if this is good or bad, it has the advantage to address males and females as a group (it is otherwise "he" or "hes" (plural of "he")).

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