User talk:Margotbean/Singular they

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On the use of Singular "They"

The 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was released in October 2019. It endorses and recommends the use of singular "they" in situations where the gender of the person being discussed is not known (or when it is the person's identified pronoun). I feel it is therefore appropriate to integrate its use on the SDV wiki. There are some caveats, however.

The goal of the wiki is to be informative, unambiguous, and helpful. When use of singular "they" might be confusing, it is good practice to rewrite the sentence to avoid pronouns, to make the subject plural, or to provide a note explaining "this article uses singular they to refer to [subject in question]." I think this will make articles clear to most readers, and to non-English translators.

Despite the APA stance, the game still requires players to choose a gender at the start of the game, and this gender is reflected in game dialogues (Willy calls the player's character 'lad' or 'lass', Alex says 'you're the new girl' or 'you're the new guy', etc.). Given that, it will sometimes be appropriate to refer to "he" or "she" when referring to the player's character. In addtition, the first sentence on The Player page states "The Player refers to the playable character in Stardew Valley." Until the game is updated to allow for nonbinary characters, the wiki will reflect the game.

When referring to people playing the game, and not their choice of in-game character, singular they is now the preferred pronoun. Again, best practices for avoiding confusion are to rewrite sentences to avoid pronouns, make the subject plural, or add a note specifying that singular they is being used.

Subject/Verb Agreement

The proper verb for singular they is "are", not "is", in the same way that singular "you" and plural "you" use "are". This can create confusion, so, again, use the best practices specified above.

Children

The sprite files for children are called 'Toddler' and 'Toddler_girl' (as well as 'Toddler_dark' and 'Toddler_girl_dark'). So, it seems the game enforces a binary child system, complete with traditional blue outfits for boys and pink outfits for girls.

The page also refers to "opposite gender" couples, which is strongly discouraged by the APA Style Guide. In this case, however, we have exclusively cisgendered marriage candidates, do we not? I welcome further discussion about how to handle this page!

"Cisgendered" is not a word, or at the very least a discouraged variant of the adjective "cisgender". Kupiakos (talk) 02:51, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Although the APA Style Guide is not available online, an abridged version of Chapter 5 is available at https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/gender

Note that this is not the APA blog, but a summary of the Style Guide's contents, published directly by the APA.

Consensus

Please feel free to express respectful opinions that agree or disagree here! This may be a mind-bending change for some, but I do feel it's an appropriate one for the reasons given above. Thank you! Feel free to comment below. I have set this page up under Discussion pages, so it should be editable, but if it is not, please leave a note on my regular talk page, so I can fix the problem. margotbean (talk) 19:59, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

I feel the argument that the lack of a non-binary option for game characters is not at all applicable to the discussion of pronouns of those characters. Many people playing the game play with avatar characters representing themselves, and so dictating that the pronouns of the in-game player *must* be he or she is rather disrespectful to players who do not play the game in that separated manner. If the player is representative of me, the in-game character is referring to me. A limited set of sexes available to play is irrelevant. This also extends to marriageable characters with multiplayer. I say this as a binary trans person with heavy interactions with the non-binary community.

One argument for singular they I've not seen mentioned yet: consistency. It is inconsistent to change between they and he/she based on whether the subject is in-game or not. And, as I've stated above, it's disrespectful to label the main character as requiring binary pronouns.

While I agree rewriting to avoid pronouns is the best solution for many cases, he/she as a construct needs to go. It is clunky to read, recommended against in multiple style guides, and is often exclusionary. Best, Kupiakos (talk) 04:28, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

I personally can't think of an instance where use of singular they would be confusing. It's great that the APA recognizes it now and I'm glad to see it being adopted on the wiki, but at least in American English, the use of singular they isn't new. I believe most people (especially in the Stardew community) would not be confused by its use on the wiki and I don't think a note is required. It has always been (in my opinion) a good option when discussing someone who's gender hasn't been specified. Using it when someone prefers they/them pronouns is a given of course. I'll echo Kupiakos's view that "he/she" should not be used for all the reasons they give. I'm not sure if there are actually any instances of this on the wiki. Odin (talk) 21:20, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Footnote

The reasons that I consider the APA Style Guide to be the authoritative source are discussed on the Children talk page. This page is somewhat a continuation of the discussion located there. margotbean (talk) 20:12, 17 November 2019 (UTC)