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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42803
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

An example of the problem in an aggravated form surrounds the controversy of [France changing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ in official paperwork](https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/02/france-changes-mother-and-father-to-parent-1-and-parent-2-under-new-law/) - where the controversy suggests the new standard implies one parent is 'secondary' and the designation may induce completely unnecessary family conflicts.

In technical writing this may happen also; we have two or more completely independent identical units/objects/devices, which need to communicate. Any of them may initiate the communication, and this will assign them specific roles, but before the conditions occur, they are perfectly equivalent and so suggesting any order, priority, sequence etc would be misguiding - but we still need to distinguish them; assign them some designations when describing the situation. Marking them "Unit A, B, C"; "1, 2, 3"; "X, Y, Z", "Alpha, Beta, Gamma" this all is a specific sequence. I might try using symbols, 'unit @, unit \*, unit %' but I believe this by itself would be rather confusing, never mind not yielding itself for verbal communication.

Can you suggest a convenient set/system of identifiers to use e.g. in technical writing or legal documents, that doesn't imply any order or priority of the options, but still allows to reference them uniquely?

Original score: 9