Another fun fact: for political correctness, an artificial gender-neutral way of referring to both male and female students has long been the "internal capital I" [1]:
Recently though, the Green Party has gone a step further in Germany, and now uses in all of their documents the so-called "gender-star" [2]:
Student*innen
This is because it was felt that the version with capital-I only focused on males and females, but still excluded trans-sexual, trans-gender, and inter-sexual people.
This practice has even led to a new verb in German: "to gender", i.e., to use politically correct gender-neutral language.
This practice has even led to a new verb in German: "to gender", i.e., to use politically correct gender-neutral language.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnen-I
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/die-gruenen-machen...