How to prevent unconscious bias from marring your messaging
Follow this guidance to do no harm in your edits and to ensure your changes empower instead of invalidate an author’s voice.
Editors, like all humans, have implicit biases, which can sometimes be reflected in our edits.
Although we may believe that we’re improving the copy, we may actually be undoing the conscious choices that writers have made, especially when we make assumptions as we’re editing.
Sometimes our biases show themselves in microaggressions. These are brief, commonplace comments or actions—often unconscious or unintentional—that signal hostile or negative attitudes toward marginalized groups.
Just because microaggressions are unintentional doesn’t make them any less invalidating or hurtful. In everyday life, microaggressions appear in different ways. Someone who is non-white is called a credit to their race. A disabled person is told how inspiring they are for persevering. A woman is referred to as a mom in an article about her professional achievements.
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