Google Docs (word processing app) is introducing a function that will warn users if their language isn’t inclusive enough. A user writing about pregnant women might be prompted by Google to use the term pregnant persons or pregnant people instead.
According to The Times:
When a journalist at the Commercial Observer real estate publication in the US typed that a “landlord announced” an expansion to their office space, Google Docs flashed up: “Inclusive warning.
Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers. Try instead: ‘property owner’ [or] ‘proprietor’.”
For John F Kennedy’s inauguration speech, it suggests changing “for all mankind” to “for all humanity.”
The function is being rolled out to some business users of Google Docs, for whom it has been switched on by default, the Vice news website reported.
The tool also suggests synonyms that it believes would make text flow better. In Jesus’s sermon on the mount, Christ should not have talked about God’s “wonderful” works, but should have considered calling them “great”, “marvellous” or “lovely”, with the suggestion: “These synonyms may make your writing flow better.”
Accordingly, Martin Luther King should have talked of the “intense urgency of now” not the “fierce urgency”.
“Not only is this incredibly conceited and patronising — it can also serve to stifle individuality, self-expression, experimentation, and — from a purely utilitarian perspective — progress,” Lazar Radic, a senior scholar in economic policy at the International Centre for Law and Economics told The Sunday Telegraph….
Google previously provided a guide for writing more inclusive documents, with suggestions to use “baffling” instead of “crazy”, “person-hours” instead of “man-hours” and “older adults” instead of “the elderly”.
It recommends saying that someone “uses a wheelchair” rather than describing them as “wheelchair-bound” and that a person is “living with” rather than “suffering from” a disability.
I have been saying for some years that in my opinion, this particular agenda has more to do with self-censorship than inclusivity. If you bombard people with this nonsense – especially children – it instills in them an innate fear of causing offence and the resulting consequences.
A few years ago, I mentioned on The RA Show that conversations in the future will take forever, as people hum and haw for an age before they are satisfied that what they are about to say won’t get them into trouble.
