Panel Discussion: American Copy Editors Society
Second National Conference, Portland, Oregon, September 1998

Panel members were Doug Kim, Melissa McCoy and John McIntyre

This handout was offered as a starting point for discussion:

When we work as copy editors, our responsibility is not simply to
accuracy in usage of language, but also to appropriateness. Our various
publications have widely differing standards of what is suitable for
publication, and applying those standards can require great delicacy of
judgment.

In particular, we are all moving into new territory as we attempt to
discover what it means to publish in a multicultural society. For
newspapers in particular, but also for magazines of broad circulation,
the effort to avoid giving unintentional offense to readers  has led to
debate on what we are calling for the purposes of this discussion
“charged language.”

Such language carries an emotional charge of a kind liable to offend or
anger readers. We are going to attempt to categorize the various types
of charged language and describe various strategies for dealing with it.
We do not expect to arrive at definitive or universally satisfactory
conclusions, but we do hope to embark on productive discussion.

We expect to address these questions in particular:

(1) How do we identify what constitutes charged language, and how do we
deal with it? Through stylebooks and editorial rulings? How do we
determine what is most appropriate for our individual publications and
their audiences? Who decides? Where do we draw the limits?

(2) If we limit the use of charged language, are we succumbing to a
tyrannical political correctitude, making our publications duller and
more timorous? Or are we indicating a higher level of respect and
courtesy for our readers and the people we write about? When do we look
responsible, and when do we look silly?

CATEGORIES OF LANGUAGE

(1) Obscene and most offensive: the common sexual, anatomical and
excretory obscenities, not limited to “fuck” and “shit,” and the most
offensive personal or ethnic terms: “nigger,” “spick,” “gook,” “faggot,”
etc.

A touchstone: When, if ever, is it permissible in your publication to
use the word “nigger”? The following passage was filed in an article
about the U.S. invasion of Haiti to restore ousted President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Would you have challenged it?

   The attitude of the [U.S] occupying forces could probably be summed up
by the infamous observation of Haiti made by then-U.S. Secretary of
State William Jennings Bryan: “Dear me! Think of it. Niggers speaking
French.”

(2) Offensive: The somewhat milder ethnic, religious and personal terms:
“Polack,” “fairy”  and the like.

(3) Expressions once widely current but now found insulting: “paddy
wagon,” to “welsh” on a bet, etc.

(4) Terms widely current but not universally acknowledged to be
offensive: “trailer trash” and other terms of class identification.

EXAMPLE A:

A small, square woman in a T-shirt and sweat pants, with too much
eyeliner and hair carelessly pinned up in a horsetail on the top of her
head, Smith looks like a truck-stop waitress.

EXAMPLE B:

For a week, camera crews have been parked outside a two-story, blue home
there, waiting for Linda R. Tripp – like some hibernating groundhog – to
show her face.

EXAMPLE C: From an article on public schools:

At Severn River, like every middle school in Anne Arundel County except
one, students are “tracked,” grouped by their perceived abilities into
separate classes. And it doesn’t take an education expert to see when a
teacher like Troutner is stuck in a class period where the school’s
discipline problems, throwaways, and dumb kids have been sent to learn.

(5) Sexual terms: How do we strike a course between the vulgarly
colloquial (EXAMPLE  D) and the pompously clinical (EXAMPLE E)?

EXAMPLE D: From a police story:

A man put a silver handgun to her head, forced her over by the washing
machines, and told her he wanted a blow job, police said. Police said
when the woman refused to comply, the man forced her to masturbate him
for about five minutes, then fled.

EXAMPLE E: From a trial story:

The boy accused his foster mother of performing fellatio on him and
masturbating him, as well as forcing herself on top of him and placing
his penis in her vagina numerous times throughout his stay with her.

(6) Sexist terms: Does your publication understand indefinite pronouns
to be masculine  – “Everyone should bring his own book”? Or does it
prefer to recast the sentence or weasel out with a plural pronoun in an
“everyone . . . their” construction? Does your publication use
“businessmen” as a collective, or does it prefer an alternative such as
“business people”? How much of an effort does your publication make to
be gender-neutral?
 

(7) Politically charged terms: Does your publication permit the terms
“pro-life” and “pro-choice” as standard terms of descriptions, or are
they limited to use in quoted matter? Does your publication allow the
use of “right-wing” to describe people holding certain conservative
views? If so, does it ever use the term “left-wing” in parallel
circumstances?
 
 

CATEGORIES OF PUBLICATION

(1) Newspapers and magazines of general circulation, attempting to reach
the widest audience and cause the least offense.

(2) Specialty papers, particularly alternative papers, and magazines,
with greater freedom.

(3) Books, with perhaps the widest freedom in language.

(4) Electronic publications, with widely varying stan

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