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T he Diversity Style Guide is a resource to help journalists and other media professionals cover a complex, multicultural world with accuracy, authority and sensitivity. The guide includes terms and phrases related to race/ethnicity; religion; sexual orientation; gender identity; age and generation; drugs and alcohol; and physical, mental and cognitive disabilities.

The Diversity Style Guide was originally a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, based at the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University. The mission of the center, which closed in 2016, was to make journalism more inclusive from the classroom to the newsroom. An earlier version of The Diversity Style Guide was produced in the 1990s by CIIJ’s News Watch Program with help from many journalism organizations.

In recent years there’s been much talk about “political correctness.” This is not a guide to being politically correct. Rather, it offers guidance, context and nuance for media professionals struggling to write about people who are different from themselves and communities different from their own. No one person can determine the correct usage of a word; this guide takes wisdom and advice from leaders in the field who have researched and considered the cultural, political and linguistic meanings of words. Most of the terms are taken directly from style guides prepared by other organizations. In those cases the terms link back to the original guides.

Most of the terms were taken, with permission, from these organizations and their style or media reference guides:

SDX-Foundation_SPJ_Logo2This new, expanded guide was supported by generous grants from the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at San Francisco State University and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of the Society of Professional Journalists. It was reviewed by April Bethea, chair of the SPJ Diversity Committee.

The source of each term is noted at the end of each entry. Information included in brackets [ ] was added to the original definition. Terms not credited to other sources were written by the editor, usually in consultation with experts in the field.

About the Editor

The Diversity Style Guide was edited by Rachele Kanigel, a professor and chair of the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University. For 15 years Kanigel was a newspaper reporter writing about diverse communities for The Oakland Tribune, The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC, and the Contra Costa Times. In 2019 she published a companion book to The Diversity Style Guide, which expands on the terms and definitions listed here and provides further guidance on covering a diverse, multicultural world. The book is widely used in classrooms, newsrooms and media organizations around North America.

It takes a village

Research assistants Cecilia Abate, Chantel Carnes, Arash Malekzadeh and Danielle Parenteau-Decker helped assemble the guide. Graphics were designed by Harlan Frost.

Thanks to the following people for help with writing and editing definitions:
Nancy Bronstein
Kristin Gilger
Joe Grimm
Sandra Razieli
Rebecca Rosen Lum