The Daily Emerald, like many newspapers, has an in-house style guide, which is our homebrewed attempt to create a more perfect system of language. The style guide deals with topics from the mundane ─ it’s “toward,” not “towards” ─ to the profound, like how we write about racial and gender disparities. In recognition that inclusivity and equality should be at the heart of everything we produce, members of the Emerald newsroom recently met to review our style guide line by line to see where we could improve.
All members of the Emerald newsroom were invited to take part in the style guide review. The panel ultimately consisted of Duncan Baumgarten, James Croxton, Sophia Edleblute Capps, Melanie Henshaw, Sarah-Mae McCullough, Ryan Nguyen and C. Francis O’Leary. These seven represented members of the Emerald’s management team, news, arts and culture, podcast and copy editing desks. They also represented a range of cultures, ethnicities and genders. However, we recognize that there will have been topics we overlooked.
Reflecting the Emerald’s commitment to transparency, the following are a few of the major changes the panel agreed to, and how we came to those decisions.
Gender Inclusivity
It is now standard practice for the Emerald to always ask subjects for their pronouns and to never assume gender identity. All pronouns are to be used the same way without explanation. For example, we would write “Alex loves ice cream. Their favorite flavor is chocolate,” instead of “Alex, who uses they/them pronouns, likes ice cream. Their favorite flavor is chocolate.”
We made this decision in consultation with the Trans Journalist Association’s style guide, and because it’s inherently othering to treat one person’s pronouns as deviant and another’s as the norm. All are gender identifying and all are valid.
We also concluded that the general grammatical criticism of using they/them pronouns is an insufficient argument and that if a sentence gets confusing, we will rephrase it to use the person’s name instead of their pronouns. In the end, it’s the writer’s duty to accommodate for the subject’s identity and not the subject’s duty to accommodate for the writer’s ability.
Race and Ethnicity
The Emerald has made the decision to diverge from AP style and capitalize all terms that refer to an individual’s ethnic or cultural identity, including the terms “People of Color/Person of Color” and “White.”
Capitalizing “White” in reference to racial identity was a difficult and long-discussed decision.
After our first meeting, we were at loggerheads. We recognized arguments both for and against the capitalization of White, but we realized our group would benefit from the inclusion of Black voices. Panel members agreed to reconvene in a week and to pass the interceding days reaching out to on-campus individuals and groups and researching the topic. Resources panel members tapped to make the decision included the National Association of Black Journalists’ style guide, the Columbia Journalism Review and more.
After much deliberation, the majority of panelists voted to capitalize “White” in cases wherein a writer is referring to an individual’s identity, but not to capitalize when writing about concepts like white supremacy and white nationalism.
Regardless of racial identity we will not mention a person’s race unless it is relevant to the story and, whenever possible, ask a subject how they choose to identify. Identifying ethnicity based on a subject’s appearance can lead to harmful misidentification and stereotyping, which is unacceptable at the Emerald.
The words we use shape how we view the world around us and language is ever evolving. As such, Emerald staff will continue to update the style guide as necessary, and will meet no less than once per year for a full review. With these updates we can ensure our coverage is respectful to every member of our audience and maintains consistency.
