The international guide to gender-inclusive writing

From the content designers at the Gender-Inclusive Language Project:

  • Kinneret Yifrah
  • Bobbie Wood
  • Katie Szymanski
  • Barbara Kofler
  • Elisa Nunes
  • Charmaine Paul
  • Alice Orrù
  • Ruben Vitiello
  • Adina Cretu
  • Kristina Levchenia
  • Aya Ueki
  • Patricia Gómez Jurado
  • Andrea Zamora
  • Gladys Diandoki
  • Jana Aydinbas

Introduction

Hello Content Designers, UX Designers, Product Managers, Localization people, and anyone on a product team. When it’s time to write for your products, refer to this guide for suggested best practices around using gender-inclusive language to ensure that all people feel welcome and acknowledged in your experiences.

Contents

Questions to guide gender-neutral writing

Before you start creating content for your product, ask yourself (and your team) these questions to help guide content creation that is inclusive for all types of users.

  1. Is mentioning or requesting biological sex or gender absolutely necessary for the product? (Like it might be for medical apps, dating apps, or matrimonial apps.)
  2. Does your product address users in an appropriate way without causing offense or hurting their beliefs?
  3. Have you used Male, Female, Mr., Ms., or Mrs. to refer to your users? Would they feel respected with these titles—or boxed in? Could they be removed?
  4. Are your forms and error messages genderless to include all users? For example, does your product use gender-inclusive language for input validation errors?

Here’s an example of using unnecessarily gendered language:

Label: Enter your name
Hint text: Mr. Manish or Ms. Priya

Always imagine a very diverse group of users for your products and work to include everyone. Think “How would they prefer to identify themselves?” Avoid excluding people.

How to write for forms

Data-collection forms exist in almost all apps and websites, so it makes sense that we’d work extra hard to make sure our forms are gender-accommodating. Here are our recommendations.

Don’t mix sex and gender

The World