TimmyH
Facebook gets grammatical
July 4th 2008 03:11
The social networking site Facebook is about to get serious about grammar. Programmers have revealed that users will no longer be seeing grosely incorrect statements like “Tim changed their profile picture.”
Many users who haven’t specific their gender on the site will be asked to do so over the next few weeks. Facebook will no longer have a default “their” setting, or the ridiculous and consequently made-up word “themselves,” as has been the case up until now.
Someone’s gender understandably poses grammatical problems in the English language, but there are far greater implications for other languages. Some don’t have the gender neutral option which English has.
“People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely," Naomi Gleit, a product manager with Facebook, wrote last Friday in a company blog.
Transgendered people, and anyone else who finds the male-female distinction difficult to draw will still have the option of removing gender from their profiles.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has had to deal with grammatical problems. Late last year an abundance of people joining groups which demanded the removal of “is” from the status function forced the social networking site to allow users to write their own updates devoid of the word.
The recent gender changes are expected to make Facebook more appealing in various non-english speaking countries, especially throughout asia.
Many users who haven’t specific their gender on the site will be asked to do so over the next few weeks. Facebook will no longer have a default “their” setting, or the ridiculous and consequently made-up word “themselves,” as has been the case up until now.
Someone’s gender understandably poses grammatical problems in the English language, but there are far greater implications for other languages. Some don’t have the gender neutral option which English has.
“People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely," Naomi Gleit, a product manager with Facebook, wrote last Friday in a company blog.
Transgendered people, and anyone else who finds the male-female distinction difficult to draw will still have the option of removing gender from their profiles.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has had to deal with grammatical problems. Late last year an abundance of people joining groups which demanded the removal of “is” from the status function forced the social networking site to allow users to write their own updates devoid of the word.
The recent gender changes are expected to make Facebook more appealing in various non-english speaking countries, especially throughout asia.
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