From one who went out to write in a gender-sensitive way

In this blog post, I share my experience revamping the c-rex.net blog. Since the end of March 2021, you can choose in our blog in which form the posts should be presented: in generic masculine, in generic feminine, with gender colon or in double form.

The image shows a word cloud composed of the words author:in, author, author, technician, technician:in, blogger:in, blogger, blogger, operator:in, user:in. In the background you can see colorful chalk.

Recently, we introduced a technical solution for gendering in PDF publishing and on the web. In this context, the c-rex.net blog has been completely revised, so that you as a reader now have the choice in which form you would like to read blog posts from c-rex.net. In our first post about gendering it was already mentioned that I have revised all previous posts for this purpose. Today I'll tell you how I felt about it.

Make blogposts 'gender responsive'.

My task was to make all the previous posts 'gender responsive'. Cool word: 'gender responsive'!

Gendering' is about no longer 'uniting' people with the generic masculine, but finding other ways to address everyone regardless of their (lived) gender. Common solutions are the use of so-called gender signs, the gender colon, the gender asterisk, the gender gap.

And so I searched our blog for words in the generic masculine. Customers, users, technical writers, operators, designers were just some of the terms that should not remain so masculine.

Note:

In this post I show examples, almost all of which are taken from the blogpost about HOMAG and Industry 4.0. I work with DITA/XML in the oXygen editor. I have included the corresponding text markup (tags) in the examples.

Create terminology for gender terms

Die relevanten Begriffe habe ich in eine Terminologiedatei geschrieben und dort alle Formen des jeweiligen Begriffs eingetragen. So sieht zum Beispiel der Eintrag für den Begriff „Autor“ aus:

Screenshot of the genderterm entry 'author' in the terminology file — The term 'author' in the terminology file

During the revision, I have continuously expanded this terminology. Whenever I encountered addressing a target group in the generic masculine while reading or writing, I included this term with its possible gender variants.

Replace words with gender terms

Instead of simply typing the word Autor or Autoren when writing, I now reference such terms as gender terms from the terminology file. It will look like this:

Screenshot of a text passage where the word 'authors' has been inserted as a gender term — Text passage where the word Autoren was inserted as a gender term

Now you may think, replacing terms in existing texts can't be that hard. But you wouldn't believe how often the sentences in our existing c-rex.net blogposts were written in such a way that simply replacing a word with the gender term was not possible.

We talk a lot on our blog about Lesern, Autoren, Anwendernhave the focus of des Anwenders, des Technikers und des Dienstleisters on the topic.

In the next example we have such a case. It says … zu wieviel Prozent eine … Lösung other users zum Erfolg geführt hat. with .

Screenshot of a problematic text passage — Problematic text passage: bei anderen Anwendern

And now? Reformulating was the order of the day in … zu wieviel Prozent eine … Lösung other users zum Erfolg geführt hat..

Screenshot with the change to the problematic text passage — Uncomplicated reformulation of the text passage: andere Anwender

Okay, that was easy. So let's move on.

The next example talks about the der Autor … beschreibt. Simply swapping out the term Autor does not solve the problem with the 'masculine-masculine' singular. I had to get rid of that der somehow. Why? Because with the conversion otherwise from it the der Autorin … beschreibt or der Autor:in … beschreibt would become Not nice!

Screenshot of a text passage with 'the author', singular and with article — Problematic use of der article of

Probate means for this is the use of the plural form. So I no longer write from the Autor but from Autoren. This can then become the following, depending on our readers ' choice of representation:

die Autoren … beschreiben
die Autorinnen … beschreiben
die Autor:innen … beschreiben
die Autoren und Autorinnen … beschreiben

Fits!

Screenshot of a text passage in which plural is used instead — Solving the problem by using plural

Let's look at one more example. This is about the formulation ein Team von etwa 150 Mitarbeitern erstellte …

Screenshot of an example with the text passage 'Employees — Problematic text passage ein Team von etwa 150 Mitarbeitern

From this, after my revision, 150 Mitarbeiter erstellten im Team … Hmm, is that still synonymous? Oh never mind, for this case a slight shift in meaning doesn't matter.

Screenshot of the revised example of the 'Employee' text passage — Solving the problem by changing the sentence structure, slightly shifting the meaning?

And this is how the text section looks after referencing the term from the term database:

Screenshot of an example with the gender term in the plural 'employees'. — Team von 150 Mitarbeitern – 150 Mitarbeiter im Team

In our blog, you, the reader, can decide on the presentation.

Screenshot of the gender shape display choices on the c-rex.net blog — Choices in the c-rex.net blog

And depending on the chosen variant, the text passage in the post looks like this:

Screenshot of the variants in the blog post — Display variants in the c-rex.net blog

Note:

The Mitarbeiter above could have been resolved differently by simply leaving out im Team. However, I just wanted to show and raise awareness that gender sensitive wording can bring some small challenges and that you have to adjust and practice that.

Conclusion of my experience so far

As an interim conclusion, I hold for myself: Writing our blog in a gender-sensitive at all requires some extra effort and getting used to a different wording.

As far as rephrasing strategies go, it currently looks to me like dropping the accusative, genitive, and dative when naming groups of people is a good idea. Also, using plural instead of singular usually works well.

One option for implementation on the c-rex.net blog would have been to simply use the gender colon. However, if - as with our technical solution - I have the additional option of inserting gender terms to let our readers, i.e. you, decide on the presentation of the contributions, I am all the more pleased.

Then I'm happy to put up with the extra work of incorporating new terms into our gender terminology and referencing them when writing.

The additional effort is kept within limits. If you look at our blogposts, you'll see from the underlined terms that there aren't that many gender terms. Many terms are repeated. And this eliminates the need for a rewrite of gender terminology, and the terms can be quickly inserted.

I can assure you that a learning effect set in for me very quickly. By revising existing blogposts, I've become well versed in the subject matter and now pay attention to wording directly when writing, where gendering works well.

For supplemental tips and a reference to a tool-based review of existing texts for gender-appropriate language, see Congree's whitepaper Gender Sensitive Writing with Linguistic Intelligence, which in turn links to additional resources on the topic. The website https://geschicktgendern.de also contains useful tips and a gender dictionary for reference and inspiration.

And now it's up to you!

However, there are also passages in the text that cause frowns. Take a look at this paragraph in the Doppelform variant.

Screenshot of an example of a term cluster: Machine operators, service technicians and plant managers — Accumulation of terms

How are you doing with it? Do you like it? I don't just mean this example, but gendering in general. Write me here or on LinkedIn, XING or Facebook. I am looking forward to your feedback!

About Regine Ceglarek

Regine Ceglarek has been on board at c-rex.net GmbH since 01.02.2021. As a technical editor, she takes care of the blog and the documentation of the software solutions c-rex.net DTS and c-rex.net IDS.