So many times I changed “dumb” to synonyms for “bad” or “wrong.” The work yet to be doneĪfter swapping out or removing those 72 instances, I updated our style guide to clarify what we mean about using inclusive, neutral language: Making all these updates at once highlighted how reflexively we use a discourse of disability in signifying what is undesirable. “Dumb” would become “trivial” or “silly” “crazy” would become “hectic” or “wild.” “Insane” became “abundant” in one case “crippling” became “insidious.”
#Whats another word for lame update
Every update I made led to clearer, better writing. These words are lazy placeholders for more precise language. We use words like “crazy” and “dumb” to mean dozens of things. And that’s OK - it’s a statement of fact, not disparaging anyone by equating their physicality with anything negative. One older blog post told a story about a legally blind customer. Words like “mental,” for example, can be either neutral or ableist, depending on the context. Not every instance of these words is inappropriate. (Yikes.) Many of these were tropes we leaned on again and again in writing about customer experience over the years: “There are no stupid questions” “Don’t leave your support team flying blind.”Ī global find-and-replace wasn’t an option because: Our Growth Lead, Eli Overbey, used Screaming Frog’s SEO tool to crawl our site, and it spat out 72 matches. An Incomplete Guide to Inclusive Language for Startups and Techġ2 Words You Need to Ban From Your Vocabulary to Be a Better Ally
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