Whatever your views on sexist language, you should avoid sexist terms in your writing.  The overall trend is to non-sexist writing.  Many governments, corporations, organisations, and unions have introduced non-sexist writing as standard practice.

What is Sexist Writing?

Sexist writing includes all words and phrases that carry a bias towards one sex or use terms that stereotype one sex. The main types of sexist writing are:

Using masculine pronouns to include both sexes
(he, his, him, himself)

SEXIST:    When an author dies, his heirs have exactly 50 years to profit from his work.

NON-SEXIST:    When authors die, their heirs have exactly 50 years to profit from their work.

SEXIST:    Each employee must report to the supervisor to check his time sheet. If he does not, his pay will be docked.

NON-SEXIST:    Employees must report to the supervisor to check their time sheets. If they do not, their pay will be docked.

Using “man” or words including “man” to include both sexes

SEXIST:    Five million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.

NON-SEXIST:    Five million French people can’t be wrong.

SEXIST:    The meeting discussed the firm’s manpower needs.

NON-SEXIST:    The meeting discussed the firm’s staffing needs.

SEXIST:   Man’s history on Earth…

NON-SEXIST:    The history of human life on Earth…
NON-SEXIST:    The history of humankind on Earth…
NON-SEXIST:    Our history on Earth…

Note: Words such as manipulate, manufacture, manager and mandate are not discriminatory because they have no masculine connotations.

Using job titles which refer to only one sex

SEXIST                       NON-SEXIST

businessman executive, businessperson, manager
cleaning lady cleaner
watchman guard
policeman police officer
manageress manager
male nurse nurse

Using words or phrases that degrade, exclude or stereotype women

SEXIST:    the little woman
so simple even a housewife can understand
my office girl will book your ticket
the best man for the job
the man in the street

How to Avoid Sexist Writing

Avoiding sexist writing is surprisingly easy – once you recognise it. The following suggestions will help you to develop non-sexist habits that will soon become second nature:

Avoid masculine pronouns (unless referring specifically to men or boys)

• By using the plural

SEXIST:    If a driver brakes, he…

NON-SEXIST:    If drivers brake, they…

• By using “you” or “your”

SEXIST:    If a driver brakes, he…

NON-SEXIST:    If you brake, you…

• By using “he or she” or “his or her” instead of “he” or “his”

SEXIST:    If a driver brakes, he…

NON-SEXIST:    If a driver brakes, he or she…

Avoid using “man” or “men” (or words containing “man”) to include women

SEXIST:    The man who gets the highest score wins.

NON-SEXIST:    The person who gets the highest score wins.

NON-SEXIST:    The one who gets the highest score wins.

SEXIST:    man-hour, manning, three-man committee

NON-SEXIST:    work-hour, staffing, three-member committee

Avoid job titles with a reference to gender

SEXIST:    workman, woman doctor, headmaster
NON-SEXIST:    worker, doctor, headteacher or principal

Avoid sexist cliches

SEXIST:    man about town,

old boys’ network

Avoid referring to adult women as “girls” or “ladies”

SEXIST:    The girls in the office…
NON-SEXIST:    The women in the office…

Give equal treatment to the sexes

SEXIST:    Dave and his wife were at the party.
NON-SEXIST:    Dave and Doris were at the party.

SEXIST:    Members and their wives are invited.

NON-SEXIST:    Members and their spouses are invited.

NON-SEXIST:    Members and their partners are invited.

Do not assume your reader is male

SEXIST:     Dear Sir,
NON-SEXIST:     Dear Sir or Madam

NON-SEXIST:     Dear Customer, Dear Reader, Dear Member

Use no title or “Ms” if you don’t know whether your reader prefers to be known as Mrs or Miss

SEXIST:    Dear Miss Smith, Dear Mrs Smith

NON-SEXIST:    Dear Ms Smith, Dear Sandra Smith

(The best way is to look to see how they sign their letters and use that as a guide.)

As you can see, there is usually more than one way to make your writing non-sexist. Choose the one you feel most at home with and that fits the context. You will find that avoiding sexist terms is simply a matter of rewriting and taking care not to cause offence by undervaluing the role of women.

There are many times when you have to say no or pass on disappointing news.  You cannot give every job applicant the position, you cannot always award a pay rise, you cannot agree to exchange goods and so on.  All these occasions call for you to say no tactfully.

The key to writing these difficult letters well is to write sympathetically and positively.  The first paragraph should mention your decision to say no but in a sympathetic way.  You should then go on to explain the reasons for your decision.

Try to find something positive to say to balance the bad news but make sure this doesn’t sound false.

Checklist

1.    Be straightforward about your decision to say no.
2.    Explain the facts or reasons for the decision.
3.    Be sympathetic to your reader’s needs.
4.    Explain your case step by step.
5.    Offer something positive.

If you write an employment reference, make sure you give a fair and honest summary of the candidate’s abilities and qualifications for the post.

Checklist

1.    Summarise your support for the person.
2.    Give a brief account of your knowledge of the person.
3.    Explain the role the person has had in your organisation.
4.    Outline the candidate’s qualities for the position.
5.    Note any reservations you have.

Good writing is clear and concise.  It uses short sentences and simple words, keeps to the facts and is easy to understand.  Good writing is easy to recognise – it makes you want to read more.  For most of us, good writing doesn’t come naturally;  it’s a skill we need to learn.

You can improve your writing by following the accepted principles of good writing.

The principles that underlie all good writing are:

• Plan and organise your material.
• Keep your average sentence length low.
• Use verbs to give your writing action .
• Prefer the simple word to the complex word.
• Make every word count.
• Avoid jargon, cliches and foreign words.
• Use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.
• Read and revise everything you write.

No writer, no matter how expert, can produce a perfect first draft. Editing your draft will improve the way it reads and will help you focus on how well you have achieved your aim in writing.

Reading Your Writing

The first step in editing your writing is to read your work thoroughly.

One of the tests for your writing is to read your work aloud or have someone else read it to you. By reading your work aloud, you hear style faults and mistakes your eyes alone would miss.  If you can’t read your work aloud in your office, read through your writing slowly and deliberately, sounding out the words in your head.

When you read, put yourself in your readers’ place.  How will they react?  By looking at your writing from someone else’s view, you’ll see new ways to improve your draft.

Reading your work will show if you have repeated yourself or used ambiguous statements, weak arguments, and so on. Even at this stage, don’t be afraid to add new information or make major changes to your draft.

Revising Your Writing

StyleWriter helps you to revise your writing by acting as an editor to look for style and usage faults.  You will still need to read your writing through to check how well your writing sounds as a whole.

As you read your writing, mark any changes you want to make.  Don’t only examine the content of what you’ve written: think about how it reads. Does it say what you want it to say?  Is it written in the right tone?  Have you followed all the principles of good writing? Look at the Editing Checklist help screen to help you edit your writing.

The foundation of all good writing lies in thinking, planning and organising.

Good writing is clear thinking on paper.  Unless you think before you write, you will not become an effective writer.  Just as with any complex task, your first job in writing is to think about, plan and organise your work.  You might only need to think for a few seconds before writing a short letter but much longer for a major report.

With practice, planning and organising will make each writing task easier and save you time.  It helps you organise your ideas, prepare your material, and order your facts and arguments in a logical sequence.  Before you start writing, you should ask questions about your writing task.  You need to consider:

• the AIM of your writing,
• the AUDIENCE for your writing, and
• the ORGANISATION of your writing.

“Plain English is clear, straightforward expression, using only as many words as are necessary.  It is language that avoids obscurity, inflated vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction.  It is not baby talk, nor is it a simplified version of the English language.

Writers of plain English let their audience concentrate on the message instead of being distracted by complicated language.  They make sure that their audience understands the message easily.”

Professor Robert Eagleson

The main goal in writing is to convey your ideas with the greatest possible clarity and to design and write in a way that best serves your readers.  Plain English is clear English.  It is simple and direct but not simplistic or simple-minded.

StyleWriter helps you write in plain English by identifying words and phrases in your writing that detract from clarity.  It questions your use of long sentences and passive verbs and aims to make you think about every word you write.

StyleWriter Plain English Writing Software does not encourage a standard style that everyone should follow.  Rather, by helping you break out of the typical business writing style, StyleWriter encourages you to express yourself in your own words.

Using plain English does not mean everyone’s writing must sound the same. There is no one “right” way to express an idea.  Every thought can be expressed in many different ways and the variety comes from the individual way we approach an idea or writing task.  There’s plenty of room for individual style, rhetoric and imaginative writing.  So let StyleWriter help you get rid of your poor writing habits and let you express yourself in your own words.

Changing passive verbs into active verbs is probably the best-kept secret of professional writers and editors.  If you use active verbs whenever possible in your writing, you’ll change your style from dull, impersonal and long-winded to vigorous, interesting and readable.

When StyleWriter highlights passive verbs in your writing, it advises you to turn them into active verbs.  This tutorial teaches you two ways to do this and also explains when you can use passive verbs.

First Method:    Place the agent before the verb

Place the agent before the verb

Ask yourself:  Who did it?  Then place the answer before the verb.

Example 1

Passive:    The new representative was hired by the Marketing Director.
Who hired the new representative? the Marketing Director
Place this information before the verb and we avoid the passive verb

Active:    The Marketing Director hired the new representative.

Example 2

Passive:    The committee decided that management should be kept up to date on developments in the computer industry.
Who should keep them up to date?  We have to add this information if we want to avoid the passive verb.
Active:    The committee decided the Technology Unit should keep management up to date on developments in the computer industry.
Note: Passive verbs are often ambiguous.  The passive verb be kept hides information from the reader.  Turning passive verbs into active verbs has the advantage of making your writing clearer and more informative.

Example 3

Passive:    After the application has been considered you may be contacted and you may be invited  for an interview.
Who considers the application?  We do.
Who will contact the applicant?  We will.
Who will invite the applicant?     We will.

Active:    After we have considered your application, we may invite you for an interview.
Note:    Turning passive verbs into active verbs makes you use more pronouns and names of people.  This improves your tone as the reader deals with human beings rather than impersonal bureaucracies.

Example 4

Passive:    If no money is withdrawn from the policy, the insurance-linked savings fund will continue to grow until a claim is made.
Who withdraws the money?  The policyholder.
Who will make the claim?  The policyholder.

Active:    If you do not withdraw money from the policy, the insurance-linked savings fund will continue to grow until you make a claim.
Note:    We could redraft the sentence starting with the phrase:  “If the policyholder does not withdraw…” however, if the reader is the policyholder, it is much better to personalise the message and use the pronoun “you“:  “If you do not withdraw…”

Example 5

Passive:    It is mistakenly believed by most business writers that sentences should be written with passive verbs because that is the way it is normally done.
Who believes this?  Most business writers.
Who writes this way?  They do.
Who does this?  Everyone else.

Active:    Most business writers mistakenly believe they should write sentences with passive verbs because everyone else writes that way.

Second Method:    Cut out as much of the passive verb as possible

Cut out as much of the passive verb as possible.

Example 1

Passive:    The written exercise is expected to take about one hour.
Delete is expected to and add ‘s‘ to take
Active:     The written exercise takes about one hour.
Note:    The passive verb is often wordy.  Cut passive verbs from your writing and you’ll cut up to 20 per cent of the words in your document.

Example 2

Passive:    Trade Press is involved in publishing specialised magazines.
Delete is involved in and change publishing to publishes
Active:     Trade Press publishes specialised magazines.

Example 3

Passive:    This brochure is intended to show a typical house plan available with every order that is placed for a new building plot.
Delete is intended to and add ‘s‘ to show.
Delete that is placed.

Active:     This brochure shows a typical house plan available with every order placed for a new building lot.

Example 4

Passive:    The two equations are used to link the data that has been taken from the sample questionnaires.
Delete are used to
Delete that has been taken

Active:     The two equations link the data from the sample questionnaires.
Note:    This example shows that material traditionally written with passive verbs, such as academic and scientific papers, can use active verbs.

Example 5

Passive:    The service contract is drawn up to allow part-payment on a quarterly account with the balance of the contract value to be charged to the account at the end of the year.
Delete is drawn up to and add ‘s‘ to allow
Delete to be before the word charged
Active:    The service contract allows part-payment on a quarterly account with the balance of the contract value charged to the account at the end of the year.

When to Use Passive Verbs

Occasionally you’ll need to use passive verbs.  There are three main reasons:

1.    To focus attention on the receiver of the action
2.    If the agent is unknown or irrelevant
3.    To be deliberately vague

1.    To focus attention on the receiver of the action

Passive:    The officer was presented with the military’s highest heroism award.

Explanation:    Here the writer wants to focus the reader’s attention on the person receiving the award, not the person presenting the award.

Other Examples:

Passive:        The two players were seen at the hotel.
Passive:        They were both arrested for shoplifting.

2.    If the agent is unknown or irrelevant

Passive:    The book was printed in 1990.

Explanation:    The writer may not know who printed the book.  Even if the information is available, it may not be relevant to the reader.

Other Examples

Passive:    The computer was delivered on time.
Passive:    David Jones was born in 1953.

3.    To be deliberately vague

Passive:    A mistake was made in processing your claim.

Explanation:    Sometimes the writer wants to hide information from the reader or wants to avoid taking responsibility for a problem or a mistake.

Other Examples

Passive:    Some toxic material may have been placed in the water supply.

Passive:    An accident was caused because of poor safety standards.

How can I present the information?

Many people find organising their writing difficult, but good organisation is a key to effective writing.  You should always plan what you write before you start writing.  Having a plan helps you develop a logical order for your writing and helps prevent you from repeating yourself or leaving out important information.  A plan can be anything from a few jotted notes to an elaborate numbered outline.

Most writing has a three-part structure: introduction, body and conclusion. Your introduction should tell readers about the aim, contents and conclusions of the writing.  The body should present your arguments, facts and information in a logical order your readers can follow.  Your conclusion should summarise the information and report your findings, conclusions or recommendations.

Developing an outline

Try using the following steps to develop an outline to help plan your writing:

1.    Make a list of general topics you want to cover.  Don’t worry about their order yet but make sure you don’t leave anything out.
2.    Under each topic, enter key words, examples, arguments, facts or sub-topics to help you remember what you want to write.
3.    Decide the order of the items under each topic and mark them.  If any topic has too many sub-topics under it, break it down into separate topics.
4.    Review your outline for relevance to your aims and audience.  Delete any item that is not essential.

5.    Number the topics in the order you want to present the information or ideas.

If you are writing a short letter or memo, you may only need to make a list of topics, review their relevance to your aims and audience, and then put them in the order you want.

You don’t have to stick rigidly to your outline but can change it as you investigate and research your supporting material.  Having an outline before you research helps to shape your thinking, but don’t let it prematurely dictate your final piece of writing.  For example, as you research background information, you may find there are other important points to include and so have to fit them into your outline.

So let your outline help focus and organise but not obstruct or inhibit your thinking and writing.

Ordering your writing

There are many ways to order writing and you must decide each time you write which is the most suitable.  The order you use in writing influences your readers because it shapes their thinking.  Here are some of the ways of ordering writing:

• Descending order of importance – most important first
• Ascending order of importance – most important last
• Ascending order of complexity – simplest first
• Categorical order – setting categories to consider information under
• Chronological order – setting sequence of events

Although all these ways have their uses, the most useful are categorical order and descending order of importance.  Categories are useful because they allow readers to move through the document easily and not miss important information.  Putting your most important information or arguments first means your readers are more likely to read them.

However, as you develop your outline, think which method of ordering best suits your subject and your readers.

Plain English consultant Daphne Perry reviews the latest StyleWriter style-checker software.

How would you like it if every letter and report from your professional adviser was quick and easy to read? If their documents were quick to review, with the main points emerging clearly? If you could copy their advice to your business colleagues without first having to translate it into business English?

Some law firms know their clients would love this, but are not quite ready to deliver it. Their lawyers learned their style from judgments, statutes, textbooks, teachers and colleagues, all pretty much using the same style clients have been complaining about for hundreds of years. (IT professionals sometimes meet similar criticism from lawyers.)

That style is not easy to read or quick to review. See how long it takes you to find the error in this 56-word sentence.

‘Without prejudice to any other right or remedy we may have, we reserve the right to set off any amount owing at any time by you to us, whether under this Agreement or any other agreement which may exist from time to time between us, against any amount payable by you to us under this Agreement.’

Perhaps your clients don’t mind legalese in their agreements. But do they want it in your advice? Or in your legal updates and pitch documents? One way to eliminate hard-to-read documents is to use plain English style checking software, such as StyleWriter.

What does StyleWriter do?

StyleWriter is a Word add-on. You click on a button and in seconds it has checked the whole document for the three main obstacles to understanding: long sentences, passive verbs, and hard words. It gives the document a score for the first two, and an overall score for clarity. And it suggests improvements. About how to use stylewriter, see following posts:

Using StyleWriter with Ami Pro
Using StyleWriter with Microsoft Word
Using StyleWriter with WordPerfect

It works like a spellchecker, flagging word patterns it has been taught to recognise as potential problems. Where possible, it offers alternatives for the writer to accept or reject (or ignore) with a click of the mouse. Or it may suggest ways to edit out the problem. As you edit, StyleWriter updates its scores. It gathers statistics to help organisations audit their documents for clarity. What you can measure, you can manage.

In three years of working with StyleWriter, I have found its advice sensible and user-friendly. If a document scores well on StyleWriter Software, it is not hard to read.

What doesn’t it do?

StyleWriter is no substitute for expert editing. It can’t solve problems, only flag them up. It can’t tell you where to add headings, or how to chop up a long sentence or why lawyers keep saying ‘from time to time’. If you don’t know these things, you need training to go with it. But it can tell you whether your own solution to these problems is easy or hard to read.

StyleWriter can only check language, not other important aids to ease of reading such as good layout, useful headings or a logical treatment of the subject. And it is no judge of context, so the author must always decide whether to accept its advice.

Other Writing Software like whitesmoke, ginger software are only check spell & grammar too, but they are focus on text enrichment & grammar checking. More about these 3 top rated writing software, see whitesmoke, stylewriter, ginger software comparison.

Example

Here’s what you get when you run StyleWriter on the clause just quoted.

The ‘Style index’ is the score for clarity, taking into account the average sentence length, percentage of passive verbs, and a lexicon of tens of thousands of words and phrases it has been taught may unnecessarily hamper the reader’s understanding.

Here’s another version of the clause, ten words shorter and in three short sentences, making it quicker to review. See how long it takes you to find if the mistake is still there.

‘Set-off: We may set off anything you owe us under any agreement against anything we owe you under this Agreement. This does not affect any other right or remedy we may have. It is not limited to agreements already made or sums already due.’

Its scores reflect the improvement.

Style Index 45 Average for General Writing
Average Sentence Length 15 Excellent
Passive Index 33 Good

Does it work on legal documents?

StyleWriter is designed for business, government and academic use. So it doesn’t pick up problems unique to the legal profession, like the abuse of ’shall’ and ’such’ and it questions legal terms that lawyers use correctly, such as ‘novation’ and ‘fiduciary’. You can tailor StyleWriter’s advice for legal documents; I’ve done it myself twice, although it’s not a job for the novice. But if your aim is to write business English, the original lexicon will give useful results even on legal documents.

What about pitches and legal updates?

Contracts and legal advice don’t need to grab the reader’s attention; any reader usually has a strong motive to find out what they say. If the writer has set no obstacles in their way, you can honestly call the clarity ‘Excellent’.

But the Bog index draws on an even wider lexicon of 200,000 words, plus acronyms and technical terms, to measure whether the text is gripping or boring. If boring, StyleWriter can offer only general advice – to write in personal terms (you and we), use contractions (can’t and won’t), include names (Daphne not The Author) and use lively verbs. You can display graphically the most and least boring words and sentences in your work, to help you edit. The Bog index for both the original and rewritten clauses is better than the Style index, because it gives them credit for using you and we.

The real value of the Bog index is for pitch and marketing text or anything the client or prospective client has not paid for and might decide not to bother with. Take this text from a firm’s web site, which has an Excellent style score but is still boring, with an Average Bog index (55).

A negligence claim against a professional services firm can be expensive, time-consuming and, for the individuals concerned, traumatic. Our lawyers have been helping these firms for more than 10 years. Our professional liability team consists of experienced lawyers from our commercial litigation, construction and finance groups, based in our offices throughout Europe and the Far East.

Compare this opening paragraph from a legal update, with a Good Bog index (27).

Say you received your payslip one day and noticed that out of the blue your salary had been doubled. Tempting as it would be to keep schtum, surely most of us would put our hands up and query the figure?

Doesn’t Word have a style checker?

Word 2003 and 2007 both include a Grammar check tool. It works like a spell checker, with an option to display statistics. Word’s readability statistics for the original set-off clause look like this:

This tells you the percentage of passive verbs and the average sentence length. And it says you’d need 25 years of education to understand this clause at first sight. But it doesn’t identify this clause as a long sentence, because it only does that for sentences over 60 words. In fact, Word finds no fault with the clause at all.

Its grammar checker merely tells you ‘That style is not easy to read or quick to review’. If you can add a Style check (2007 only) it actually strips out plain English, suggesting you replace But with Nevertheless and Or with On the other hand. Lawyers don’t need this sort of advice.

Other products exist to help edit your writing, such as MyWriter Tools. This is cheaper but you may not find it as useful.

Are there any technical limitations?

You need Word to get the full benefit of StyleWriter. If Word is your email editor, you can also use StyleWriter to edit Outlook files. And you can edit clipboard text copied from other programs, but you need to copy it back again when done.

You can install StyleWriter on a network, which may involve some work to get it working smoothly with a document management system. You’ll need to decide whether to allow users to add or delete words and phrases, or to do it only centrally. You could also decide to add your own house style to StyleWriter’s advice.

StyleWriter v4 costs £110 plus VAT or $160 for a single user.

Daphne Perry is a plain language trainer, writer and consultant with three years’ experience of working with StyleWriter to promote plain language in a City firm. Before moving into training and writing, she practised commercial law for 12 year: daphne.perry@clarifynow.co.uk.