Talking About People: A Guide to Fair and Accurate Language

by Rosalie Maggio

Anyone who works with words and people will want to keep this indispensable guide close at hand. In her highly entertaining style, best-selling author Rosalie Maggio offers thousands of alternatives for outdated, stereotypical, and damaging language. This substantially updated and expanded version of Maggio's earlier work, The Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage , also covers numerous words and phrases that were not even part of our language five years ago. This handy reference guide merits a place next to the dictionary and thesaurus of all who are sensitive to the use of fair and accurate language. It will help them make an informed judgment when choosing words to describe people in terms of their age, sex, employment, economic status, religion, lifestyle, ethnic background, or disability.

448 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 1997

Reviews

[Salsabrarian]

This dictionary lists bias-free alternative terms to and clarification of words like spinster, manned, disabled, plus ethnic references, and more. As the author points out, it's not about oversensitivity to terms. "One of the rewards of breaking away from traditional, biased language...is a dramatic improvement in writing style" and "the fear of saying the wrong thing is the proverbial fear that springs from ignorance." After browsing this, you can see it really isn't that difficult to use bias-free language.