<i>When a user visits the website, they will be assigned a session ID, and it will be transmitted to them in the HTTP response and stored in their browser.</i><p>There will always be people who resist this kind of construction, not because they're sexist but because the singular 'they' sounds clumsy to modern ears, its long history notwithstanding. Instead, try something less periphrastic:<p><i>Visitors are assigned a session ID, which is transmitted in the HTTP response and stored in the browser.</i><p>Shorter, clearer, more direct, and gender-free.
A better gender-neutral pronoun FAQ: <a href="http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/</a>. It compares the alternatives that can be used as a gender-neutral personal pronoun (both words already in common use like "they" and neologisms) and points out the advantages and potential problems of each with a deliberately constructed text (<a href="http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html#one" rel="nofollow">http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html#one</a>).
As a monolingual English speaker, I've always wondered how this works in languages that use gendered pronouns for referring to inanimate objects (French, German, etc.)<p>Does the classification of nouns into masculine and feminine reflect gender stereotypes at all? Is there a similar movement towards neutral pronouns for all nouns?
Given that many neologisms are already added to the Oxford English dictionary every year, I don't see any compelling reason why a singular gender neutral pronoun (such as the Spanish "su") cannot simply be created.<p>Such a word might seem strange at first, but if major broadcasters such as the BBC instructed staff to use it, larger society would soon fall into place – at least in written English.
The sentence is inaccurate, as the user is not assigned a session ID. Instead, generally the visit is.
The user is only the controller of the browser, and hence for the most part doesn't see any of this.
You can also get rid of the passive voice and make a stronger statement at the same time.
Doing all this reduces the need for any gendered language.<p>When a user visits the website, the site assigns a session ID to the visit and transmits it in the HTTP response. The user's browser stores this ID.<p>/pedant (n.b. there is at least one grammatical error in the above pedantry)
Does someone have already heard or said something like "I've been offended by the gender of the documentation of Sendgrid, so I chose to go with Mailgun!" ?
The joker in me wonders if now would be an opportunity to become the biggest contributor to GitHub of all time by running a script that changes the pronouns on all repositories.<p>Nobody can afford to reject such a pull request now...<p>Or what would happen if we started pestering Linus about including a pronoun check in git by default?