Google will nudge users to adopt gender-neutral language

IN THE 1990S parodies of Clippy from Microsoft Word were a bit of a trend in cartoons and magazines. The annoying paper-clip-shaped figure would pop up as soon as you began writing “Dear…” and say: “It looks like you’re writing a letter,” before offering unsolicited advice on things such as formatting.

Two decades later, various automatic aids to writing, including spelling and grammar-checkers, are much better. They are both more discerning—powered by artificial intelligence rather than manually programmed—and more subtle in their operations. Many writers are grateful for their interventions.

But now tech companies are wading into trickier waters. In 2020 Google’s internal style guide was updated, encouraging developers to eschew “unnecessarily gendered language” in their documentation. Rather than referring to “man hours”, for example, a coder might discuss the “person hours” involved in a project. “All of mankind” could be replaced with “all of humanity”, the guide’s authors suggested.

On May 18th the company announced that it was going further in its promotion of inclusive language. Google Docs, its popular free word-processing software, would soon be nudging people away from potentially sexist language, such as the generic use of “chairman”. Instead it will offer gender-neutral suggestions including “...