How Not to Be a Jerk
A useful primer on inclusive language
My whole guiding principle as a writer is that one of the kindest things we can do for other people is to communicate clearly with them. Inclusivity is a related concept; we can’t write for the broadest audience possible if we make some people feel bad about themselves as we do it.
And while I seriously doubt that anyone who found their way to my Substack is the sort of person who still tries to fight over the use of the singular “they,” there’s so much more to being inclusive in our writing than that. English is a language of imperialism, full of all sorts of constructs and terminology designed to reinforce a certain power dynamic.
Perhaps you’ve heard that we’re no longer saying “master bedroom,” for instance, as invoking the terminology “master” implies the presence of slaves. (Go with “main bedroom” or “primary bedroom,” and everyone will still understand what you mean.) There are tons of examples like this, where the second you stop and think about it, you realize how messed up a term or expression is.
So today, let’s chat about a few different ways you may not have noticed your writing could stand to be a bit more inclusive.
The best pronoun to use for someone…
Is whatever they told you to use, of course. But in cases where a pronoun is unknown, or you’re writing about a hypothetical person (i.e. the reader) rather than a specific one, there are two possible solutions:
Write the whole sentence in second person and sidestep the entire pronouns issue. You save yourself so much trouble doing this (see what I did there?) and it usually sounds better, too.
If it has to be third person, use the singular “they.”
That’s it. Those are your options.
Fortunately, we seem to be past the days of “he/she,” but I come across some other variations from time to time. Some writers will switch back and forth between “he” and “she” throughout a piece of writing, as though trying to cover all their bases, which I believe introduces unnecessary confusion.
Or perhaps, in an attempt to remedy millennia of male being the default option, you choose to just use “she” as your default pronoun instead. Alison Green of Ask a Manager, for instance, has written that whenever someone asks her a question about their manager or other authority figure and doesn’t provide that person’s gender, she chooses to assume the manager is a woman and uses she/her pronouns in her answer.
While I appreciate that sentiment, it’s ignoring the fact that we have two completely fine gender-neutral pronouns at our disposal, “you” and “they,” and causes readers to work a little bit harder than they need to in order to understand what you’ve written.
White = good, black = …
It is truly astounding how many English expressions are based on the unspoken assumption that something white or light is desirable and something black or dark is undesirable. Stated like that, you can see where the problem comes in, can’t you?
The example of this people usually give is whitelist/blacklist, but consider “white glove” as a synonym for luxurious, “white hat” hackers and “white knight” do-gooders, “white lies” as harmless and wishing for “brighter days ahead.” Then think about the terms “blackmail” for committing extortion, “black marks” on your record, illegal “black markets,” the “black sheep” who doesn’t belong, and the “dark times” we have experienced.
It may be impractical to remove this bias from our vocabularies entirely; if you need to talk about the astronomical phenomenon known as a black hole, I don’t see much way around it. But it’s always worth running a quick search on your writing for white/light/black/dark and consider if you could rephrase anything to avoid those associations.
It’s also worth remembering that not all cultures share this assumption that whiteness is synonymous with goodness, especially outside of the Western world. Speaking of which…
Assuming your reader has had a particular experience
By default, we tend to write for an audience similar to ourselves, with a similar background and knowledge level on topics we know well. For me, that might mean assuming that my readers had a middle class upbringing, have been to college, and are of a fairly liberal-to-socialist political persuasion. But here’s the thing:
The wider the audience we write for, the fewer assumptions like this we can make.
Not everyone grows up with a “mom and dad,” so maybe we don’t want to use that phrase. Not everyone learns to drive, so an extended driving analogy might not be the best way to get your point across.
People who grew up in other countries might have a completely different set of cultural touchstones than what you take as standard. Or maybe you’re like me and have seen almost no popular TV shows because you have a short attention span for audio and a highly sensitive cringe reflex and so you don’t recognize the vast majority of memes and what meaning they’re supposed to impart.
The key is to think clearly about what the purpose of a piece of writing is and how accessible it needs to be. If you’re writing professionally, that often means your words are for a fairly broad, public audience, and you’ll need to make a few rounds of edits to ensure most folks reading will be able to understand you.
“You can bring a horse to water…”
Let’s focus in on idioms here. I personally find it fascinating when an expression comes into my mind that I picked up somewhere and I realize I have no idea what it literally means, only what linguistic function the analogy serves. But I’m a word nerd, and I think about things like this for fun.
Idioms can certainly make speech more fun, but they also make it harder to understand. If your audience hasn’t heard the expression before, they need to take the extra time to think about what it means and why you’re using it, which can distract them from your larger point.
Those expressions are also often culturally specific. If someone comes from a country where baseball isn’t particularly popular, will they get what you mean when you say you “hit it out of the park”? If they’re not used to corporate environments, will they understand your request to “double click” on a particular topic or “circle back” to it later? Every time you use one of these terms, you narrow your audience unnecessarily.
Language stolen from other cultures
Look, I get it. It’s fun to use culturally specific words that summon a vivid image in your reader’s brain, and it can feel like those terms make your writing more interesting and dynamic.
But there is actually no reason you need to refer to your meeting as a “pow wow” or your guide as a “sherpa,” and using these words is cultural appropriation. You do not need to say “gypped” when you mean scammed, refer to a poor neighborhood as a “ghetto,” or describe your pet as your “spirit animal.” Also watch out for phrases that do something similar with forms of disability, like “going in blind” or “tone deaf.”
The tradeoff to using words and expressions like these is causing portions of your readership to feel they don’t belong, and that your writing is not for them. I promise, using the simpler wording will not make your piece of writing boring. There is plenty more you can do to spice things up without relying on lazy cultural stereotypes.
How we identify ourselves
The most important words to get right, of course, are the words we use to describe other people and groups. Which makes it particularly frustrating that there’s no quick guide to what the correct language is to describe race, gender, sexuality, disability, and more, and often there isn’t a consistent answer within a community either.
When you are describing a specific person, by all means, please ask them what words they use to identify themselves. But when you’re discussing groups more broadly, here are some tips:
Make sure what you’re saying is literally true. Don’t refer to people as “African American,” for instance, if they’re not American. And don’t refer to an individual as “diverse” or “neurodiverse” as those are words that can only describe groups.
When it comes to person-first vs. identity-first language, a good rule of thumb is this: Identity words come before the noun, while medical conditions come after the noun. So we say Black person, Jewish person, nonbinary person; but person with cancer, person with high blood pressure, person with the flu. When an autistic person tells you they prefer identity-first language, that means they see autism as an identity and not a medical condition.
Say the part that’s relevant rather than naming broad categories. If I’m writing about how to make your website accessible to people using screen readers, I don’t need to parse the differences between “legally blind,” “low vision,” or other terminology. I can just say “people who use screen readers,” because that’s the part that’s relevant.
Honestly, it’s hard to predict every possible circumstance, so a quick Google search can also be your friend here if you’re wondering about the right verbiage for a specific category of people.
This section’s not working? Kill it
When I was working for a telehealth company a few years ago, my company acquired another brand that had a very similar ethos to ours. And when we first met their marketing team and saw their brand guidelines, I heard one thing that made a lot of sense to me but I had never thought about before:
“We don’t use violent language here.”
Idioms: “Kill two birds with one stone.” “Beat a dead horse.” “When push comes to shove.” Describing things that aren’t literal wars as wars: “The war on drugs.” “Combat misinformation.” “She won her battle against cancer.” Words that it would not even occur to me came from violent origins until they were pointed out: “target,” “aim,” “armed.”
When we want to talk about accomplishing something, it’s amazing how many expressions we might use have violent undertones. In aggregate, I think it’s a sign of how much our culture is focused on solving problems through force rather than compromise, and while it feels silly to pin that accusation on someone who says “aim” instead of “goal” a few times to vary up their word choice, maybe we shouldn’t feel the need to say that a doctor is “armed with knowledge”?
In healthcare, this feels like an important stance to take; if you’re in the business of healing, you shouldn’t be talking about fighting. For less sensitive contexts, I don’t find it wholly necessary to remove every trace of aggressive verbiage from our vocabularies, but again: Read it back. Do you actually need to use that word? Or will another do just as well, without reinforcing our culture of violence?
This category is the one I have the most trouble with personally, other than trying to prevent myself from using a few remaining ableist mental health-related phrases that are lodged in my brain like “crazy,” “nuts” and “sanity check.” It’s insidious how much of our language seems specifically designed to make others feel bad.
I don’t expect anyone to be perfect when it comes to inclusive language. It’s nearly impossible to think of every pitfall we might encounter. But if everyone tries just a little bit harder every day, we can make our writing (and the world) a little more welcoming.