Chapters
9 chapters.
- Race & Ethnicity
Terminology across racial and ethnic identity. How source guides frame race, where they agree, where community self-identification changes what the "default" term should be, how the ground has shifted since the mid-2010s, and how the corpus names the systems (systemic racism, colonialism, discrimination, stereotypes, enslavement) behind the labels.
- Indigenous Identity & Sovereignty
Indigenous, Native American, American Indian, First Nations, Tribal, reservation: how source guides frame Indigenous peoples through identity, sovereignty, and political relationship. The chapter sits apart from Race & Ethnicity because most sources here frame Indigenous identity through sovereignty rather than race.
- Sexuality & Gender Identity
Transgender, gay, queer, bisexual, lesbian, cisgender, intersex, sexual orientation, pronouns, homophobia: how source guides handle LGBTQ+ identity, language, and journalistic practice. The strongest convergences in this chapter are grammatical (adjective-not-noun, drop 'preferred pronouns') and the central rule is universal: defer to how the subject identifies, then write accordingly.
- Disability & Mental Health
Disability, deaf, mental illness, addiction, handicapped, victim: how source guides handle disability and Deaf identity, mental health, addiction, and the language of trauma and illness. The dominant thread is procedural: ask the person, name a condition only when it's relevant, use the people-first or identity-first form the person prefers, and don't borrow this vocabulary as metaphor or as a label for a person. The dedicated source is the National Center on Disability and Journalism's Disability Language Style Guide.
- Immigration & Citizenship
Immigrant, refugee, undocumented immigrant, illegal immigrant, alien: how source guides name people by immigration status, and why the same population draws both the corpus's most-prescribed term and its most-rejected ones. The dominant thread is that status is a legal circumstance, not an identity or a crime: 'undocumented' is the settled preferred term, 'illegal' and 'alien' are near-unanimously rejected, and the precise legal category matters because it determines a person's rights. The dedicated sources are Define American's media reference guide and the Immigrant Defense Project's journalist guides.
- Class & Economic Status
Classism, ghetto, disadvantaged, the poor: how source guides handle the language of poverty, social class, and economic status. The dominant move is to name the system rather than a deficit in the person: classism is structural, the coded place names are euphemisms for race, and the charity descriptors shift blame away from the actors actually causing harm. The deepest single treatment is the American Psychological Association's Socioeconomic Status section.
- Age & Generations
Ageism, elderly, aging: how source guides handle the language of age and older adults. The chapter is small but consistent: name the structure (ageism) as the parallel to racism and sexism, default to 'older adults' over 'the elderly,' and treat aging as a lifelong process rather than a synonym for decline. The longest single treatment is the American Psychological Association's Age section.
- Criminal Justice & Incarceration
Convict, felon, inmate, offender: how source guides handle the language of incarceration. This is one of the most consistent chapters in the commons: nearly every guide rejects crime-as-identity nouns in favor of people-first language ('incarcerated person,' 'person with a felony conviction'). The shared touchstone is The Marshall Project's people-first style, which several guides cite directly.
- Faith & Religious Identity
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Muslim: how source guides handle the language of faith, religious identity, and the prejudices that target it. The corpus's strongest coverage here is of the two structural prejudices (antisemitism, anti-Muslim bias), defined the same way as racism and ageism; the identity terms turn on a single rule: be specific, and don't let a faith stand in for an ethnicity. Dedicated pages for Jewish identity, Islam, interfaith families, and the Nation of Islam round out the chapter, drawing on religion-desk and community sources rather than general equity guides.