I've never heard of 'he' being used as a gender neutral pronoun and have always used the 'he/she' in this context. I've also heard of 'they' being deemed as acceptable in this context but find that difficult to come to terms with. As an alternative the whole message could be changed to the plural - 'when users request' <div>On 3/9/06, Rocco Stanzione <<a href="mailto:grasshopper@linuxkungfu.org"> grasshopper@linuxkungfu.org</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I'm taking a break from editing the serverguide until somebody can give me some guidance on this: For example, when a user requests the page <a href="http://www.example.com/this_directory/">http://www.example.com/this_directory/</a>, they are going to get either the DirectoryIndex page if it exists, or a server-generated directory list. The word "they" here deeply offends purists such as myself. "They" is plural, of course, and it's a pronoun referring here to a singular user. To my chagrin, many authoritative bodies have begun calling this abomination "acceptable", but as far as I know they have not gone so far as to call it correct. Traditionally, "he" is the correct word here (followed by "is", of course), to be interpreted as a gender-neutral pronoun in this context. I've seen the use of "she" to maintain agreement with the subject without offending the (ridiculous) sensitivities of those who find gender persecution in the structure of the language. I'm fine with this if everyone else is, but I prefer "he". Whatever the answer to this is, it should probably be added to the styleguide. Thanks, Rocco Stanzione -- ubuntu-doc mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-doc@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-doc@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc </a> </blockquote></div> -- Grant Galbraith <a href="mailto:manicka@ubuntu.com">manicka@ubuntu.com</a>