Web Resource for Less or Un-Stigmatizing Language When Writing

September 11, 2022 6:43 PM

Language, Please – Style Guide, a resource for adopting less- or unstigmatizing language for words you may have grown up with. Interactive edit exercise and downloadable resources.

Their purpose: "You might be a copy editor looking for a deeper history of a sensitive word; a writer rethinking who your beat is serving; or a manager trying to make a tough call on deadline. The challenge is the same: Language is ever-evolving, and the words we choose to use can have lasting, consequential outcomes."

posted by MollyRealized (26 comments total)

This looks really useful; thank you for posting it. I particularly like the interactive editing exercises.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:53 PM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yes! Thank you. I've been drafting in my head an ask me about this, (help me come up with alternatives to ablest words) and you've given me a perfect resource.

A quick question (I hope it's not too much of a derail) - in replacing "crazy" with "wild" is this perhaps adopting a colonial epithet instead (wild savage). I think I'll try and adopt "bizarre"
posted by freethefeet at 7:51 PM on September 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Brilliant, I loved learning from this. Thank you!
posted by Toddles at 9:00 PM on September 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

bird names for birds
posted by aniola at 10:12 PM on September 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is great, thank you for sharing
posted by ellerhodes at 5:47 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think I'll try and adopt "bizarre"

"Grotesque" is good too.
posted by flabdablet at 6:01 AM on September 12, 2022

This is great, thank you! I hope people will resist the urge to dispose of the whole endeavor if they come across a piece of guidance or two that they disagree with. No project of this scope can hit the mark for everyone at every point.
posted by dusty potato at 7:38 AM on September 12, 2022

One thing I would love to see a resource like this try to tackle a little more is unpacking differences in usage by register. For example, in a government or think-tank environment, "persons experiencing homelessness" may have emerged as the most respectful terminology. Moving next into the milieu of a journalistic piece or an on-the-ground advocacy nonprofit, this language may come off as slightly stilted. Moving again into a setting centered around actual people who are homeless, many may find this language completely alienating. But one set of terminology does not have to be the One True Language across all registers.
posted by dusty potato at 7:50 AM on September 12, 2022 [9 favorites]

Anyone got a good replacement for "pull the trigger"? I hate the gun metaphor but it's useful shorthand, and in very common use. I searched for "trigger" but didn't see anything relevant to that usage.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:05 AM on September 12, 2022

"Grotesque" is good too.

Not liking grotesque so much.
posted by Billiken at 8:09 AM on September 12, 2022

Anyone got a good replacement for "pull the trigger"?

Get started, kick off?

Useful links in the post, thanks!
posted by ellieBOA at 8:11 AM on September 12, 2022

For older adults, one may hear "elderly", "senior citizen", etc. Research asking older adults about the various terms has shown that there's no favorite term and that "elderly" is the most disliked. The journals of the American Geriatrics Society several years ago banned the use of "elderly". If you submit a paper with that word in it the paper will be returned with a request for you to use something else. "Older adult" quickly became the term of art and is used pretty universally.

Strangely, in casual conversation among those of us in the field, "elder" is still widely used.

In talking to someone living in assisted living or a nursing home one should not refer to their home as a "facility". It is their home and should be called such.
posted by neuron at 8:23 AM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Presenting this as being for copy editors who might want to know more about the complex history of certain words seems highly optimistic. I can already see this slotting into our desires for yet more rules of etiquette to help us get extra credit in social justice class and raise our empathy GPA.

Guys, every crazy person I know, diagnosed and stigmatized and abused by the system as you like, says crazy and is not harmed by the word. If you want something that's genuinely stigmatizing of mental illness and social deviance, the constant moral imperative that strangers who exhibit undesirable behavior ought to "seek therapy" is right there.

I guess my issue is that these kinds of language rules do precisely nothing. I've seen government officials use the preferred terminology of "unhoused people" while calling for their summary eradication by the pigs. I've seen land acknowledgments from corporations that have no connection to any native people. I've seen bosses who will respect workers' neopronouns while they bust a union. We need to do away with this idea that justice can be invoked like a magic spell.
posted by jy4m at 10:14 AM on September 12, 2022 [17 favorites]

Anyone got a good replacement for "pull the trigger"?

Take the plunge?
posted by dusty potato at 10:39 AM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

>> Anyone got a good replacement for "pull the trigger"?

> Take the plunge?

release the hounds • push the button • immanentize the eschaton • strike the match • make it real • drop the ring in the volcano • put things into motion • initiate launch • GO! GO! GO!
posted by thedward at 11:33 AM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

For words that are dispreferred for literal or metaphorical use, we should assign new meanings. Frex, ‘crazy’ could be repurposed to mean ‘tangy and lightly effervescent’.
posted by thedward at 11:39 AM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Presenting this as being for copy editors who might want to know more about the complex history of certain words seems highly optimistic.... I guess my issue is that these kinds of language rules do precisely nothing

The slope wouldn't be nearly as slippery if you weren't pouring grease on it, and people wanting to examine more deeply how their language might affect other human beings is not actually a problem that you need to solve.
posted by Etrigan at 12:32 PM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Please stick to the community guidelines and avoid turning the thread into attacks against other members.
posted by loup (staff) at 12:48 PM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've seen land acknowledgments from corporations that have no connection to any native people. I've seen bosses who will respect workers' neopronouns while they bust a union.

A perfect example of this was a video going around last year of some tech company (sorry, can't remember which one) that opened with the CEO performing a land acknowledgment and other social justice pieties before explaining why the company was opposing its employees forming a union.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:53 PM on September 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

"pull the trigger"

Do?
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:13 PM on September 12, 2022

"On the other hand, the assumption that rigidly rejecting words and phrases that have existed for centuries will have much impact on public attitudes is rather dubious. It gives the illusion of easy answers to impossibly difficult situations and ignores the powerful role of wit and irony as positive agents of self-notion and societal change."

Dr. Kay Jamison, An Unquiet Mind, 180-181. Excerpt from a long and subtle discussion of the language we use to discuss mental illness, written from her double perspective as patient and clinician. Book strongly recommended.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:43 PM on September 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Anyone got a good replacement for "pull the trigger"? I hate the gun metaphor but it's useful shorthand, and in very common use

Yes, because as well as being a weapon, a starting gun is the things that starts athletes racing, when the trigger-pull metaphor is used for beginning some long-anticipated, desired, or feared event/task. And all kinds of non-warlike objects and tools have triggers that don't relate to beginnings or tasks; power tools, joysticks, pumps, radios, gates and locks, animal traps, airbrushes. If 'push the button' and 'launch' are acceptable replacement for metaphorical triggers, I have terrible news about the kind of warfare and weaponry those terms language draw from!

In more general terms I do find a lot of these attempts overly generalising, and culturally specific, and the site's own description of its mission ('our intent with this project: to give context instead of edicts') is about right to my mind. Thoughtfulness-rules in a dictionary-list aren't actually a substitute for thoughtfulness. Nor, if the goal is to reduce the harm- and power-effects of language, is it really possible to simply assign new meanings to words, because, in the end, who assigns, and with what, if not power?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:35 PM on September 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Sure, you can also insist "pull the trigger" comes from Dutch trekken "to march, journey," originally "to draw, pull,". Some people insist the n-words are fine because of Latin nigrum ("black, dark, sable, dusky" ) too.

The etymological fallacy is tempting and all but don't act like it's some weird stretch to consider this phrase to be a gun reference. I suppose some would say the term "nail gun" is completely innocent of all warlike metaphor but I'm not buying it.

Thanks all for the suggestions though, I think take the plunge captures best the usage that I see and hear the most.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:28 PM on September 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

What's the desired outcome here though, is there a specific harm that's being done to anyone by reference to index-finger switches?

Some people insist the n-words are fine

If that's the comparison being made here to a metaphor about beginning tasks, I don't think there's useful conversation to be had.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:59 PM on September 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

As a former copy editor, when people outside academia or possibly social work use language like this, they're often referring to populations that they've completely given up on helping in any material way or that they actually want to harm. The extreme levels of politeness in referral serve to mask intent, sometimes from the speaker or writer themselves.
posted by kingdead at 1:14 AM on September 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Late to this thread but I want to say how much I appreciate the post. Also want to call attention to LP's very good roundup of other websites, which is a bit hard to find: it's at the bottom of the "Our Purpose" page, here. I know and use some of these other sites in my editing work, and I'm happy to learn about more of them.
posted by miles per flower at 8:51 AM on September 14, 2022