Diversity Style Guide:

Diversity Style Guide

Our charge with this guide was to create and maintain a style guide that attempts to address common questions around appropriate language for writing about particular groups of people. The Diversity Style Guide Working Group of the Inclusive Teaching and Learning Advisory Council organized this guide around Pamela Hays’s ADDRESSING-GSA model:

• Age and Generational Influences
• Developmental and Other Disabilities
• Ethnicity and Racial Identity
• Socioeconomic Status
• Sexual Orientation
• Gender Expression

Language around diversity continues to evolve, and writers should be thoughtful and open to discussions about what constitutes fair and precise language. This guide combines several of the identities above because of language overlap, and others will be covered in future iterations. Our intended audience for this guide is academic writers in an American university setting, and the language in the guide reflects this setting. This document relies on guidance from:

• the American Psychological Association,
• the American Census, and 
• the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

However, in some instances, we make recommendations that fall outside of the style established by other organizations. 

This guide is intended to be an ever-evolving document. As such, please feel free to reach out to itl@mail.waldenu.edu with any questions or suggestions.

Hays, P. A. (2016). Addressing cultural complexities in practice: Assessment, diagnosis, and therapy (3rd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14801-000

This guide is intended to be an ever-evolving document. As such, please feel free to reach out to itl@mail.waldenu.edu with any questions or suggestions.