Inclusive Language Checker

About the Inclusive Language Checker

Paste a job advert, policy, article, e-mail or documentation — or open a Word, PDF, OpenDocument, RTF, HTML or Markdown file — and the checker highlights words that may exclude, stereotype or hurt readers: gendered job titles and the generic “he”, ableist metaphors and labels, ageist terms, racially loaded words and idioms, outdated terms about sexual orientation and gender identity, labels about income, class and immigration, and — if you ask — profanity.

Each highlight explains the problem in one sentence, offers neutral alternatives (often with a one-click replacement) and names its source: the APA 7 bias-free language guidelines, the Google developer documentation style guide, GLAAD’s media reference guide or AFSP’s suicide reporting guidelines. The word lists start from the open-source retext-equality rules behind the alex linter and were checked against those guides. Every flag is a suggestion: you decide what fits your text.

Common uses

• Checking job adverts and HR policies for gendered titles and wording that put applicants off.
• Reviewing documentation and code comments for terms such as master/slave, blacklist or sanity check.
• Editing articles and reports to APA 7 bias-free language, including singular “they” and person-first or identity-first terms.
• Writing about suicide, mental health or disability with the wording that reporting guidelines recommend.

What it checks

• Gender — gendered job titles (chairman, salesman, stewardess), generic “man” (mankind, manpower, man-hours), combination pronouns (he or she, s/he), a generic “he” or “she” after words such as each student or if a user, and stereotypes (the fairer sex, like a girl).
• Disability and mental health — slurs, metaphors (crazy, lame, blind to), negative framing (wheelchair-bound, suffers from, victim of), euphemisms (special needs, differently abled) and suicide wording (committed suicide).
• Age — the elderly, senile, senior citizens (as a label).
• Race, ethnicity and culture — slurs, outdated terms (Negro, Oriental for people, Eskimo), idioms from colonial and racist history (off the reservation, gypped), and tech terms (blacklist, master/slave, grandfathered).
• Sexual orientation and gender identity — homosexual, sexual preference, transgendered, born a man, preferred pronouns, and slurs.
• Income, class and immigration — the poor, the homeless, illegal immigrant, ghetto.
• Condescending words (Thorough only) — simply, just click, obviously, which assume the reader finds something easy.
• Profanity (off unless ticked) — strong and mild swear words.

How context is taken into account

Word lists alone flag too much, so many rules look at the words around them. “Invalid input” is fine but “an invalid” (for a person) is flagged; “the poor performance” is fine but “help the poor” is flagged; “suffers from poor management” is fine but “suffers from a stroke” is flagged; “Homo sapiens”, “spastic paralysis”, “psycho-social support”, “retarded growth” (a plant’s), “close the blind”, “Caucasian languages”, “village elders” and “kaffir lime” (with an alternative) are handled; capitalised names and brands such as Postman are skipped. One-click replacements are offered only where the result still reads correctly: “the elderly patients” becomes “the older patients”, not “older adults patients”. A pronoun is flagged only when the sentence (or the one before) talks about any person — “each”, “every”, “anyone”, “if a user” — not when it is about someone in particular.

Sources

• APA Style, 7th edition: bias-free language guidelines (general principles, age, disability, gender, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status) and the singular “they” page, apastyle.apa.org.
• Google developer documentation style guide: “Write inclusive documentation” and the word list, developers.google.com/style.
• GLAAD Media Reference Guide: terms to avoid and transgender terms, glaad.org/reference.
• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: guidelines for ethically reporting on suicide.
• retext-equality, the rule set of the alex linter (MIT licence): the starting word lists, re-checked against the guides above.

Limitations

• English only, and word-based: it does not understand meaning, so it cannot see stereotypes expressed in other words, and it can flag a word that is right in your context (an official title, a quotation, a historical name).
• It cannot know how a person describes themself. APA style: use the terms people use for themselves — person-first (“person with a disability”) and identity-first (“disabled person”) language are both acceptable, so neither is flagged.
• A generic “he” or “she” is found only after clear signs that any person is meant (“each applicant”, “if a user”, “anyone”); other generic pronouns are missed.
• The profanity list covers common English swear words and slurs, not every variant or spelling.

Privacy

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. Opening a PDF downloads the PDF engine and an English word list from MySmartCoPilot once; your text and files never leave your device.