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While reading through plenty of scientific papers for my thesis relating to Human Computer Interaction (HCI), I am under the impression almost everybody refers to users/subjects/persons/... as 'she'.
A quick check on English.SE indicates this is a relatively new trend "to balance out the perceived sexism".
Is this default or recommended in recent scientific HCI papers?
UPDATE: So perhaps English.SE can help me out. It seems like this question is already more on topic.
I tend to deliberately avoid the situation with a variety of alternatives, including, but not limited to the user and they. And in any case, it simplifies the issue a bit because once you use he or she you have to concern yourself with use of his, her, hers, etc.
I am not alone:
The Microsoft user experience guidelines is about 880 pages and refers to he in just one sentence, she in just two different sentences, and he or she in just one. But the user is used 550 times and they 384 times
The Apple Human Interface Guidelines does not use he or she once in some 280 pages but the user comes up about 445 times and they 835 times.
[Those figures are adjusted to exclude the user when used as part of the term the user experience]
I can't speak for scientific writing generally, but I do find it 'of note' these days when a text chooses to use she or he. I don't see that choosing the opposite of he really addresses the balance so much as tries to overcompensate for what I agree has been an imbalance in the past.
But you are asking an audience that is probably somewhat biased towards the user !!
No, this is not default in scientific writing. The wikipedia article on 'singular they' sheds some light on the issue.
In the late 20th century, the feminist movement expressed concern regarding the use of generic he in the English language. The feminist claim was that such usage contributes to an assumption that maleness is "standard," and that femaleness is "different". They also claimed that such use is misogynistic. One response to this was an increase in the use of generic she in academic journal articles from around this time.
There are a lot of discussions about this subject, but no standards have been defined for scientific writing as far as I have searched. Some people might approve of singular they, while others might frown upon its usage.
As stated in Roger's answer, a safe bet is to work around this issue by refering to 'the user' instead of she or he.
