Gender in technical documentation

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Was the author male or female?

 

I find books that alternate between the male and female pronouns on a chapter by chapter basis to make the most sense
I'm glad I don't see to much of the he/she his/hers bull****, that's a pain in the ass to read! lol

 

I've noticed a general trend in the books I review to primarily use a female "protagonist" throughout. I suppose it's to compensate for generations of such books that addresses only males. In my last book, I alternated examples male/female as evenly as I could. That seems to make the most sense to me rather than presenting only males or only females.

 

I've seen a few that use the 'female' pronoun. The one that always stuck to me was Shon Harris' CISSP Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

 

I think the writer was too lazy to write the book where he (or she!) didn't have to choose one gender or another. I have yet to write a test question where a choice between "he" or "she" for a "generic tech" was absolutely required.

That's not to say that I haven't written scenarios with male or female individuals... I have, and I use both. But when speaking in the generic, there are plenty of ways to write so you never have to say "he" or "she".

 

I don't think you have to avoid gender when writing technical documentation. Actually, it really depends. I maintain several manuals at my day job and gender is never an issue. I just refer to the generic "user" or "admin" and such. When reading test questions, I've noticed a general tendency (not referring to Transcender or Boson here) to personalize the questions. Something like, "Jim is the systems administrator for Goofball, Inc, an Enterprise level organization which mainly produces corporate goofballs. He wants to configure his Goofball 9000 router and..." Well, you get the idea. The next question could involve Sally, the CTO of the company, and after that, Bill, a first tier tech support guy, and on and on.

Where's the problem?

 

I think the best approach is to take a gender and stick with it throughout the book - with a little piece in the introduction stating that the author isn't intending to cause any offence by using male or female throughout. You could always offset this through judicious use of example scenarios through the book and randomly changing the sex of the protagonists.

Personally speaking though, I think it should be relatively easy to identify most technical manuals that are aimed at women. They'll be the ones with 'Russell Hobbs' and 'Morphy Richards' on the covers, and neat little pictures of ovens & irons and stuff inside...

 

That's fine... as I stated, I do that. But I'm talking about the tendency to use he/she when speaking of a "generic" tech, not a specific one (such as Jim, or Sally, or Bill). When speaking in the generic, you can almost always find another way to state your point instead of resorting to he/him or she/her.

 

Awww, but I really like making up names.

 

my MCSE books mentioned both throughout

Personally they should all be written for women real men don't read manuals, they just spend hours fiddling and then resorts to using the hammer

Grim

 

I suspect the only hammer we're about to see is the one Arroryn applies to Grim's head.

 

In most Microsoft exams the admins are also female, at least, I get that impression.