Re: BUG #13589: content error

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> On 2015-08-25 20:37:43 +0000, barnettluisa(at)gmail(dot)com wrote:
>> "Possibly, your site administrator has already created a database for your
>> use. He should have told you what the name of your database is. In that case
>> you can omit this step and skip ahead to the next section."

> Maybe: "Possibly, your site administrator has already created a database
> for your use, in which case you should already have been told what the
> name of your database. ..."?

The hard part of getting rid of "he" is to not make the text harder to
read (you failed at that) or be distracting about it. We're trying to
write technical documentation, not to be politically correct. (Being
PC is fine, mind you, I just don't want to be in-your-face about it.)

I don't mean to dismiss the idea, but I think fixing this without doing
damage to other worthy goals is going to be a lot harder than just
"s/he/he or she/g".

As mentioned upthread, constructive criticism in the form of a patch
might serve to move the discussion forward.

regards, tom lane

PS: in this *particular* example, I wonder whether we couldn't dodge the
problem by just omitting the second sentence altogether.