I’ve been thinking these days about ableist language, and have been trying to excise it from my writing.

I’d long ago eliminated words like “crazy” and “insane”, and words that describe someone's physical appearance in a pejorative way. More recently, I’ve been addressing words like “stupid” and “moron” (HT @meganL).

What I’ve learned is that changing isn’t really that hard to do once I’m aware of which words are hurtful to other groups of people. And over time I’ve built up a simple list, roughly grouped, to remind me of better alternatives. What other words do folks here favour?

• ill-judged, ill-conceived, ill-considered, shambolic, chaotic, haphazard, careless, feckless

• shallow, unserious, frivolous, simplistic, uninformed, callow

• dishonest , disingenuous, deceitful, duplicitous

• hateful, mean-spirited, selfish, thoughtless, petty

• parasitic, anti-social, selfish

• malicious, vicious, cruel, vindictive, dangerous

• toxic, venomous, poisonous

#ableism #language