NEW YORK, June 27, 2008
Facebook "Is" Doing A Grammar Update
Social Site Will Require Users To Specify Gender To Change From Default "Their"
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The online hangout Facebook is getting more serious about grammar. No more should users see jarringly incorrect declarations such as "Debbie changed their profile picture." (AP Photo/L.G. Patterson)
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Users who haven't specified their gender in their Facebook profiles will be asked to do so in the coming weeks. That way, Facebook doesn't have to default to "their" or the made-up word "themself," as it had been doing.
While not knowing someone's gender poses grammatical challenges in English, it has created even larger headaches as Facebook expands to other languages, where a gender-neutral option isn't available in plural form.
"People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely," Naomi Gleit, a Facebook product manager, wrote Friday in a company blog.
Transgendered people and other users who find the male-female distinction too limiting will still have the option of removing gender entirely from their profiles.
This isn't the first time Facebook, one of the world's most popular social-networking sites with some 80 million users worldwide, has had to confront grammar.
At first, members were restricted in what they could say in "status updates" for their friends, as in, "Nick is wasting time on Facebook." Each update had started with the member's name and "is," followed by a blank box.
Late last year, Facebook quietly dropped the "is," allowing users to supply their own verb and write updates such as "Nick just wasted time on Facebook."
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:-)
Posted by vbnvbn at 05:06 PM : Jun 27, 2008
I agree. I find it phenomenally irritating, and unfortunately common, to read sentences like "Everyone took their seat on the bus". First of all, "everyONE" is singular, "their" is plural and "seat" is singular again. Did they all take the same seat? These kinds of grammatical abominations litter our language these days. So, if Facebook is taking a stand against this, good for them!
Transgender questions didn''t even occur to me until I read the comments. (Granted, it was touched upon VERY briefly in the article.)
Declaring a gender will obviously help with the smoothness of text on Facebook...but other than that...who cares? Anyone who NEEDS to know, knows.
It sad that America is moving to asexual reading and thinking meaning they wish to remove certain words such as she/herhe/him to a genderless term. Growing up this lady has seem changes in how we are to address others from Mr/Mrs/Miss to Mr/Ms. A transgendered person will have to live in America. This a thing that is not dealt with. Do we throwe out all to gender and aplaese and pander to a unisexual life style.? I don''t as a woman. Do we have a uniform that is for all? I trully hope not.
Why all the fuss over gender. This really what this is all about. This lady knows too well as a young adult years ago the pain of being called Sir. I told them to drop the sir as your calling a lass NOT a sir. For years they would not give up. I WAS BORN FEMALE,AM FEMALE SO IT IS MA''AM NOT SIR. Now in my 50s They address me as ma''am. Ladies and Gentlemen ,it is the young that can''t handle it. It does matter our gender in society. I can''t tell until they speak.
Facebook "is" Doing A Genderless Update.
by BarbaraM99
Today America is moving towards a system where they are redoing parts of words having to with gender. We know computers are tools and only follow their progamming. Thus they have default settings put there by humans. It started with ERA movement to bar sexist words. The fact is we have two genders - male and female.
People have their say.
A person have his/her say.
A male have his say.
A female have her say.
A transgender is wrong to make us change words to fit them. I have met some.
I am legally blind.
I read a good book by means of talking books that the person has read to that media,
I do not say I heard a good book.
See what I mean.
I SAW that on the news or read about on the computer.
rf35 just wasted time on the CBS website reading a story with no news value.
What would have been wrong with he/she, his/her, etc?
Posted by rf35
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Its like a car accident .. you just can''t stop yourself from looking
What would have been wrong with he/she, his/her, etc?