> Read up on inclusive language and make sure you aren't including outdated terms.
I suppose, sure. But as the document ages the definition of “inclusive” will change, and some of the adaptations such as singular “they” can make writing less clear.
Can you give an example where it would be confusing? I know it is controversial, but to me it seems very convenient when referring to an unspecific person.
Over the years I've done a fair amount of reworking documents from "he or she" style to "they" style.
I've found that using "they" style does quite often make it harder to be clear, when you've got a sentence that's talking about both a person and some things.
Something like
"Then the operator must update all the rules. They must ensure that no bad things happen."
Does the "they" refer to the operator or the rules?
Of course you can always rephrase to make it clear again, but you're losing a certain amount of freedom of arrangement that you might have wanted to use for other purposes.
As a matter of language use only, the phrase "They are coming over to my house later". Should I expect one person, or multiple people? Should I go out and grab a 6-pack of beer for my visitor(s) or a case? Easily clarified, and I'm happy to use people's preferred pronouns, but let's not pretend there isn't the loss of precision there.
A piece of text does not use they/he/she without first establishing the noun that these will reference. The problem you are referring to does not happen if you write correctly.
Pronouns refer back to some previous noun phrase. Saying “she is coming over to my house later” would also be a weird and confusing thing to say without first establishing who you are talking about.
In technical writing you might say something like “The user will enter their password…”, where the pronoun “their” of course refers back to “the user”.
I suppose, sure. But as the document ages the definition of “inclusive” will change, and some of the adaptations such as singular “they” can make writing less clear.