Re: [s-d] Spivak Pronouns (was Amended Proposal "Rule Tag")

[shadowfirebird@xxxxxxxxx]

> Hmmm. I hadn't realized spivak had been revised. I prefer 'e' to 'ey'
> because it bears greater similarity to he/she; every time I see a
> phrase like 'ey is', my first instinct is that it ought to read 'ey
> are', which is traditionally what is done when using "they" as a
> gender-neutral singular pronoun.

Well, that makes sense.  I can see why both forms are still in use.


> The main reason for mandating the use of spivak pronouns is to
> prevent ambiguities (I have played a nomic game where a female player
> tried to argue that some rules didn't apply to her because they used
> masculine pronouns).

I assumed that something like that was the case.  That raises an
interesting point, though.  So far as I know the player object does
not have a gender.  Not only do I not know what gender all the players
are, I suspect that in the rules none of us have one!


> > I would like to establish an official way of doing this, if only for
> consistency, because I don't want to see rules reading "First e gains
> 10 points, and then ey loses 2 Charm."

Well, that would be mildly annoying, I agree, but the *meaning* would
still be clear.  Neither "e" nor "ey" have another meaning in that
context - or any other I can think of.  And so there would be no
detrimental effect on the rules.   (...?)


> Heh... or we could write an extension to the wiki where each user can
> select a pronoun set on his/her/eir/their/h*/vis/hir/zer/xyr/zir/
> thons preferences page, and when viewing the ruleset all pronouns
> would automatically be replaced with the appropriate pronoun set.

Well, again, what would that add to the game?  Other than to make it
so that each player saw a different version of the rules - something I
think that I would find disconcerting at least ... ::grin::
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