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Injury
Also written: Injury, Injuries
framing-to-avoidperson-first-language
At a glance
Source-by-source
“Refer to injuries as being "sustained" or "received" rather than "suffered," as "suffer" implies that an injured person is a victim or somehow less than a person who has not been injured. Use of "sustain" or "receive" removes the implied judgment.”
NCDJ: the chapter's anchor: names the core rule: write that a person "sustained" or "received" an injury, not that they "suffered" one, because "suffer" frames the injured person as a victim or as diminished. The neutral verbs remove the implied judgment about a reduced quality of life.
“Don't use language that reinforces stigma, or implies helplessness or victimhood. For example, describe "people living with AIDS" rather than people "suffering from AIDS."”
GCJT's disease entry states the same anti-suffering rule: avoid language that implies helplessness or victimhood. Its worked example: "people living with AIDS" rather than "suffering from AIDS": models the "lives with" construction as the neutral alternative to the suffering frame, a pattern that carries over to injury language.
“suffers from or is afflicted with [condition]”
APA lists "suffers from" and "is afflicted with [condition]" in its terms-to-avoid table, pairing them with neutral, person-first alternatives. The guidance treats the suffering and affliction frame as an assumption about a person's experience that the writer should not impose.
“casualty … Like other military terms, "casualty" hides what's happening: people killed or wounded. There's also public confusion about whether the term refers to people killed, wounded, or both. The AP Stylebook recommends: "Avoid using the word, which is vague and can refer to either injuries or deaths."”
Words About War flags "casualty" as a military euphemism that hides whether people were killed, wounded, or both, recommending the plainer "killed and wounded." In the context of injury, the entry shows how aggregating terms can obscure the specific harm done to specific people.
Synthesis
This page is about the verbs around “injury” more than the word itself, and the corpus agrees on rejecting the “suffering” framing. NCDJ states the rule: refer to injuries as “sustained” or “received” rather than “suffered,” because “suffer implies that an injured person is a victim or somehow less than a person” who is uninjured. APA’s terms-to-avoid table lists “suffers from or is afflicted with [condition].” GCJT prefers “living with” over “suffering from” and warns against language that “implies helplessness or victimhood.” Words About War extends the same logic to “casualty,” a euphemism that “hides what’s happening: people killed or wounded.”
The shared move is to strip the editorializing out of injury and illness language: report what happened (“sustained a spinal injury,” “lives with epilepsy”) without the built-in assumption of tragedy carried by “afflicted,” “stricken,” “suffers from,” and “victim of.” It is the framing counterpart to the person-first work on disability and to the victim/survivor distinction.
Audience notes
- Journalists and editors. Use “sustained,” “received,” “has,” or “lives with”: not “suffers from,” “afflicted with,” “stricken,” or “victim of.” The same rule applies to war reporting: name the killed and wounded rather than “casualties.”
- Advocates and internal comms. The suffering frame presumes a reduced life; let people characterize their own experience rather than narrating tragedy into it.
Related terms