Need cleanup advice for multiline string

[Stefan Behnel]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:40:03 +0200, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> 
>>> Or you could enter the 21 century and understand that "guys" has become
>>> a generic term for people of any sex.
>> Is that true for everyone who understands and/or writes English? In that
>> case, I'm fine with your above statement. Otherwise, I'd wonder who you
>> meant with the term "cultural chauvinism". So far, I only learned that
>> most North-American English native speakers use that term in the way you
>> refer to. That doesn't even get you close to the majority of English
>> speakers.
> 
> If you read the entire thread, you'd see that we've already discussed the 
> issue of "guys" for mixed sex groups and females. In fact, as I'd already 
> said, I'm one of those old fashioned guys who still gets surprised when 
> women refer to themselves as guys, but I'm learning to keep up with the 
> times. I'm Australian, not North American, and the British author Michael 
> Quinion, one of the researchers for the Oxford Dictionary, also states 
> that "guys" now refers to both men and women:
> 
> http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-guy1.htm
> 
> When "guys" can refer to either sex in English, American, Canadian and 
> Australian English, I think it should be pretty uncontroversial to treat 
> it as standard now.

Ok, then I guess I just misread "after being adopted in the USA it started
to change meaning" in one of the cited articles as "it changed meaning in
the USA". I didn't expect Australians (and Oxford dictionary writers, and
potentially others) to be /that/ influenced by shifts in US juvenile word
semantics...

I for one wouldn't start calling my leg "foot", even though the Austrians
kept insisting for ages now.

Stefan