Also written: LatinX, latinx
| Source | Year | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Annie E. Casey Foundation | 2013 | Use |
| SEIU | 2020 | Use |
| Sierra Club | 2021 | Use with care |
| Sierra Club | 2021 | Non-preferred |
| Native Governance Center | 2021 | Use |
| Diversity Style Guide | 2023 | Evolving |
| Racial Equity Tools | 2023 | Evolving |
| Trans Journalists Association | 2026 | Use with care |
“For nouns: African American, Asian American, black, Hispanic, Latino, Native American, non-Hispanic white, white (do not use Caucasian) …”
Casey's 2013 guide lists both Hispanic and Latino as acceptable nouns in an approved-terms list. Pre-dates Latinx's mainstream emergence and the Hispanic/Latino distinction that later guides make explicit. Valuable as a 2013 baseline that shows how this part of the language has moved.
“Latino [always capitalized], Latina [if we know the person is female] … Hispanic [always capitalized]”
SEIU's 2020 stylebook accepts both Hispanic and Latino/Latina as house terms, both capitalized, with Latina used only when gender is known. No mention of Latinx or Latine — the stylebook predates the peak Latinx debate and the rise of Latine.
“Some people use the term 'Latinx' as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina, but there is no consensus on its use. While the Sierra Club defaults to using 'Latino' or 'Latina,' you should use 'Latinx' if someone self-identifies as Latinx …”
Sierra Club accepts Latinx as gender-neutral but treats it as non-default. Triggers for using Latinx over Latino/Latina: individual self-identification, partner-org usage in published material, or explicit project-level conversation. Guide flags no community consensus.
“The Sierra Club defaults to 'Latino,' not 'Hispanic,' to describe people of Latin American heritage or descent. As when discussing anyone's racial identity, however, you should use the language people use to describe themselves.”
Sierra Club draws the Hispanic/Latino distinction explicitly: Hispanic refers to Spanish-language descent, Latino/a/x to Latin American origin. House default is Latino over Hispanic, overridden by self-identification.
“Capitalize other racial and ethnic identifiers, such as Asian and Latinx.”
NGC uses Latinx as its example of a capitalized ethnic identifier and recommends individual identifiers over BIPOC aggregation. The guide's focus is Indigenous terminology; Latinx appears in passing rather than as a primary topic, which is why the entry doesn't engage the surrounding debate (Latine, self-ID nuance).
“Pronounced 'La-teen-ex.' A gender-neutral word, increasingly used instead of Latino and/or Latina, to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity. The -x suffix replaces the standard o/-a ending of nouns and adjectives, used to signify grammatical gender in Spanish.”
DSG treats Latinx as a distinct entry alongside separately-maintained entries for Latine, Latina/Latino, and Hispanic. Describes the term's etymology and phonetics. Flags the 2019 Pew adoption data (see context_data).
“Whether to use the terms African American or Black, Hispanic American, Latinx or Latino, Native American or American Indian, and Pacific Islander or Asian American depends on a variety of conditions, including your intended audiences' geographic location, age, generation, and, sometimes, political orientation.”
RET doesn't define Latinx individually. Instead it names the whole cluster (Latinx/Latino, Hispanic, African American/Black, etc.) as audience-dependent — geography, generation, political orientation all affect which term fits. Meta-framing rather than term-level guidance.
“Terms used by some as gender-neutral alternatives to Latino or Latina. Some prefer *Latine* — or less commonly, *Latin@* — to *Latinx*. Defer to an individual's use and do not apply it to those who do not self-describe with it.”
TJA groups Latinx and Latine under one entry, notes that some prefer Latine (or, less commonly, Latin@) to Latinx, and applies strict self-identification deferral — never apply either to someone who doesn't use it for themselves.
Pew Research Center (Dec 2019)
Only 3% of U.S. Hispanic/Latino adults use 'Latinx' to describe themselves; 23% have heard of the term.
Most-cited adoption data point in this space. Frequently grounds style guides' 'use-with-care' posture — gap between progressive institutional usage and community self-identification is load-bearing for contextual guidance.
View source →“Latinx” is one of the most actively contested terms in progressive style guidance, but the contest is narrower than it looks. Among the sources that take a position on usage, self-identification is the recurring floor — Sierra Club and TJA both make it explicit. Where guides diverge is on the default — the term to use when individual preference is unknown or when writing about a group in the aggregate.
Three patterns appear in the corpus:
There is a time trend in the data: Latine is rising, Latinx is settling into a “use with care” / “evolving” posture. The 2021 guides (Sierra Club, NGC) show no awareness of Latine. Among the 2023–2024 sources, DSG’s Latine entry treats it as the more Spanish-usable form (“more easily pronounced than Latinx”), and TJA notes that some prefer Latine to Latinx. Latine’s advantage is structural: it’s pronounceable in Spanish, it follows the “e” gender-neutral pattern that Spanish speakers actually use, and it originated in Spanish-speaking LGBTQIA+ communities rather than as an English-internet coinage. Writing for Spanish-speaking or bilingual audiences is increasingly likely to call for Latine over Latinx, though self-identification still governs.
A separate call: Hispanic and Latino are not interchangeable, and later guides make that distinction explicit where earlier ones didn’t. “Hispanic” foregrounds Spanish-language heritage (includes Spain, excludes Brazil). “Latino/a/x” foregrounds Latin American geographic origin (excludes Spain, includes Brazil). Sierra Club (2021) and DSG (2023) both spell out this distinction; the 2013 Casey guide, written before this distinction had settled into style-guide practice, treats the terms as equivalent approved nouns. Use one or the other with intent, not as synonyms.
The Pew 3%/23% data, from a December 2019 survey published in August 2020, is the empirical claim the synthesis keeps returning to: only 3% of U.S. Hispanic/Latino adults used Latinx for themselves. That gap between progressive institutional uptake and community self-ID underlies the cautious posture of Sierra Club (use-with-care, default Latino) and TJA (strict self-ID deferral). DSG, citing the same Pew data, frames the term as “increasingly used” while flagging that many Latino/Hispanic people are unfamiliar with it.
“Latinx” entered mainstream English-language progressive discourse in the mid-2010s as an online coinage, gender-inclusive by design. Peak adoption by U.S. progressive institutions was 2018–2022. In the same window, “Latine” emerged from Spanish-speaking LGBTQIA+ communities as a structurally better fit for Spanish — pronounceable, grammatically consistent with Spanish’s existing patterns. Pew’s finding that only 3% of U.S. Hispanic/Latino adults used “Latinx” for themselves — from a December 2019 survey published in August 2020 — crystallized the gap between institutional usage and community self-identification, and shaped how post-2020 style guides frame the term.