Deprecation of Offensive Words | Details

The lack of a general process to deprecate words in English, often due to offensive language.

Posted on 2020-06-13

Software version control branches

Some software projects have started changing their default branch from master to main.

This naming convention controversy has existed for a while, but it definitely has become one of the battlefields at the moment.

Personally I feel like this belongs to a cross section into a larger issue in general: Deprecating and also replacing words in English that suck. Or picking a standard and making revisions as necessary.

I really wish someone could agree on a general replacement for the word "man". I've had folks get upset at me before for referring to man pages, older folks, who it the term itself belonged to their generation, not mine. I just inherited that word. Just find a word, make one up, and stop saying "man page", man, woman, and human. It my world, only those remain. And do the same with "master" (yeah... those of us with diplomas probably wonder what's the new term).

So I think I will migrate my language rules from The Org Ambassador to a new document and use that for life in general.