Why a style guide

Some people have reacted with (understandable) confusion when I told them I wanted to write a style guide for disability coverage. Aren’t style guides about grammar and language? Is it just going to be about what’s appropriate to say or write?

One of the things I love most about working with style guides is that they can be what you need them to be in the moment. So if you’re on deadline and need to know about using a term, such as “Asperger syndrome” (not generally preferred and not to be used unless a person specifically requests to be identified that way; see Glossary), or whether person-first language (“person with a disability”) or identity-first language (“disabled person,” but not “the disabled”) is correct (it depends — ask the source how they prefer to be identified and know that some groups tend to have strong preferences; see Glossary), you will find many answers in this guide. But if you have the time and the desire to read more deeply and to level up your reporting, please take a look at the rest of this guide, updates to come, and curriculum to come by Alanna King.

Modelling itself on other style guides — such as Decolonizing Journalism, Elements of Indigenous Style, Guide to Covering Long COVID, and Mindset: Reporting on Mental Health — this style guide will serve as an introduction to disability culture as well as a reporting guide.[1]

This guide looks at ways to strengthen your reporting by applying a disability lens to your work, considering such issues as how disability is commonly framed in the media (see Framing) and what pitfalls to avoid, how to find the right sources (see Sources), how to make the reporting process and the newsroom more accessible (see Publication), and, yes, ableist language (see Language, Glossary, and throughout). This guide addresses research, ethical issues and how to evaluate sources for credibility and expertise. It also aims to explore (or starts to explore) disability history, areas of active controversy, academic movements, activism, protest and counter-protest movements, and how disability intersects with other axes of oppression and marginalization, such as race, class and gender. And I discuss the political, legal and bureaucratic systems that shape the experience of disability in Canada.

Finally, this guide considers how disability informs every beat: law, medicine, arts and culture, business, sports, and anything else a journalist might want to cover. Throughout the writing of this guide, I’ve been trying to find a beat or subject where disability isn’t relevant. I still haven’t managed to. (Maybe you’ll have better luck: if you think you’ve identified one, please email me at sarah dot trick at gmail dot com. If I can’t come up with a rebuttal, you’ll win a prize that’s to be determined but will, definitely, be very silly.)

Read this style guide from beginning to end, or in small chunks over time, and engage as deeply as you want in the moment. I think you’ll find something of value: if nothing else, I’m hoping this guide will help cut down on the use of such nauseatingly twee euphemisms as “our special kids” and “differently abled” (see Language, Glossary).