At White Wolf (and in fact at CCP NA in general), we do things a bit differently than many other places. Some of the office rules probably exist in other places, only they never had to be tested, like "don't post lolcat pictures to the office spam list." (This is a rule that evolved precisely because when we didn't think we needed a rule, some folks did their enthusiastic best to prove us wrong.) [Eddy Note: This rule, to this day, is still frequently broken, despite physical threats.] Others are probably pretty unique precisely because the events they forbid are particular to the people we have on staff. But we also have a lot of stylistic rules that cover how we want to see stuff written. And one of them has thrown a few readers, and pleased others. We stick with it anyway. Essentially, it's the approach of how we handle gender in a White Wolf book.

• Alternating between generic "he" and generic "she." This is the most notable of our in-house style rules, I think, as certainly it's been noted a heck of a lot. Essentially, what we do is we try to alternate and give each generic pronoun about equal time. (If we wanted to be really accurate, we could try for 51-52% "she" and 48-49% "he," but that's too much damn work and nobody would notice even if we did.) I prefer, particularly during lists of powers, to have one, say, Disciplne assume a male character using it, and the next female, and so on. Easy to mark.

There are arguments against this, of course. One is that years of use have rendered the generic "he" effectively genderless, despite the fact that we also still use it as a specifically male pronoun. I find it harder to say personally if that's the case. I would be able to argue it if I were, for instance, a woman; if I read an instance of "he" and pictured a female character by default, for instance. Since I'm a guy, and I picture a male character by default when I read "he," I don't think that proves anything. Still, we do understand that it's got lots of grammatic precedent. Another argument is that it jolts the reader out of a sentence. This is a valid criticism, though I hear it voiced less often, and if I may be brutally honest, I've never heard it voiced by a woman. (Are you female? Does it jolt you out of a sentence? Break my chain of experiences and let me know!)

Nonetheless, this stylistic rule endure. Are we deliberately fostering bad grammar? That's arguable, I think — particularly given the way language evolves. That sounds like a cop-out excuse, right? "Language evolves." And yet it does. I heartily recommend H. L. Mencken's The American Language for some neat examples: written in the first half of the last century, it really brings into perspective just how this is an ongoing process. You can watch as we stop hyphenating "to-morrow" or "to-day", and read about when Thomas Jefferson received grammar flames for his American dialect as it varied from the King's English. Language evolves, essentially, when people have a use for it to evolve, and when holding to the old way doesn't offer clearer benefits.

And we do have uses for an alternating generic. For one, it makes examples much clearer. Consider "When the character uses this power on a target, she rolls Stamina + Computer contested by the victim's Intelligence + Brawl. If she wins the roll, he turns into delicious candy. If he wins the roll, she must hop on one foot for two turns." By alternating pronouns, the sentence becomes considerably clearer than if we were using "he" in both cases, and considerably less clunky than if we were using "the character" and "the target" instead of pronouns at all stops. Speaking as someone who writes rules for a living, I find this eminently useful. For another, it's arguably (and it is argued) more inclusive. White Wolf has a bit of a history of reaching out to the female half of the demographic, and it's worked well for us. And for others, as well — remember how I said that some of our rules aren't singular to us? You see more alternating pronouns in other works. Wizards of the Coast developed a penchant for referring to each generic class by the gender of its iconic character, and other RPG companies frequently use "she" as a generic pronoun to refer to the game master (of any name) and "he" as the generic for a player.

(On a related note, art notes often call for an alternating gender in illustrations, such as for templates and signatures. It's just a mirrored practice, only in this case aimed at the Production style.)

This approach to gender in language also means we tend to substitute "humanity" for "mankind" and "people" for "men," save in gender-specific contexts. This rule is probably much less controversial. Words like "mankind" are great when you're replicating old quotes that used the term or discussing the career of Mick Foley. Most of the rest of the time, we should use "humanity."

On a related note, "mortal" is a bit of a loaded word that can be misleading. Remember, a werewolf and a mage are technically mortal, even if they aren't "mortals' as the common gaming parlance would have it. Mages are particularly tricky as they're "human" to boot. It gets tricky, yeah?

These are essentially stylistic rules. If a freelancer doesn't hold to them, the developer steps up and corrects them. So yeah, a writer who doesn't believe in the generic "she" and refuses to use it in the context of a project is making more work for the developer (and if you make more work for the developer, the developer will be more likely to consider other options). Overall, though, the policy seems to do better for us than it causes us trouble. Does it devalue the English language? I don't think so. And that's coming from someone who refuses to use simple contractions like "u" in online conversation, no ifs, ands or buts. I could be wrong, but so far I'm pretty sure we're going to keep on that path.