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The Conscious Style Guide
Additional information
| Author | Karen Yin |
|---|---|
| Genre | Nonfiction – Reference |
| Release Date | May 28, 2024 |
| Publisher | Little, Brown Spark |
| Tags | BIPOC, Queer |
Description
A timeless, indispensable guide for anyone who wants to communicate with sensitivity and compassion.
Most of us want to choose inclusive, respectful, and empowering language. But language—and how we use it—continually evolves, along with cultural norms. When contradictory opinions muddle our purpose, how do we align our word choices with our beliefs? Who has the final say when people disagree? And why is it so hard to let go of certain words? Afraid of getting something wrong or offending, we too often treat words as dos or don’ts, regardless of context and nuance.Thankfully, in The Conscious Style Guide, award-winning editor Karen Yin provides a road map for writing and speaking with equity in mind—no matter how the world around us changes. Readers will learn:
- How to identify biased language
- How to use inclusive language to bring attention to specific groups of people
- How to adopt conscious language as a tool for self-awareness and critical thinking
- How to make digital materials more accessible, from event flyers to websites
- How to alleviate the stress of experiencing exclusionary language
- How to collaborate with others and work across differences
- How to create a style sheet to help support your practice
- And much more
With practical advice and hundreds of relatable examples, The Conscious Style Guide invites us to challenge binary thinking, embrace flexibility and creativity, and explore truly effective communication—in all aspects of our lives.Praise for The Conscious Style Guide:“This book is a tremendous resource, affirming and instructive at the same time. I absolutely love it.“—Paula Froke, editor of The Associated Press Stylebook
“Karen Yin is no language cop, ready to arrest us for our word crimes. Instead, in The Conscious Style Guide, she is the beloved school crossing guard, protecting us, guiding us, reminding us to look both ways.“—Roy Peter Clark, author of Tell It Like It Is
“With its emphasis on critical thinking and the fluid interplay between content and context, The Conscious Style Guide will inspire writers and their editors to make choices that not only respect readers but, in the process, bring us all a little closer to the truth.“—Russell Harper, principal reviser of The Chicago Manual of Style
“An essential resource for writers and editors who want to get up to speed on writing with empathy and care.“—Mignon Fogarty, host of the Grammar Girl podcast
“An essential resource for writers and editors who want to get up to speed on writing with empathy and care.“—Mignon Fogarty, host of the Grammar Girl podcast
“Karen Yin has crafted a generous, thoughtful toolkit for anyone seeking to communicate mindfully. Her insights offer a flexible pathway to practicing conscious language that avoids prescriptivism and instead invites deep reflection. A must-have reference for any bookshelf!“—Emily Ladau, disability rights activist and author of Demystifying Disability
“Yin, with insight, empathy, and unflinching honesty, deftly guides the reader through finding, and unleashing, the most potent power we have: our conscious choice of words.“—Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius
“Yin, with insight, empathy, and unflinching honesty, deftly guides the reader through finding, and unleashing, the most potent power we have: our conscious choice of words.“—Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius
“No list of dos and don’ts can replace the thoughtful guidance offered by Yin.“—Kory Stamper, author of Word by Word
About the Author
A
CES Robinson Prize winner Karen Yin coined the term “conscious language” to refer to mindful and compassionate language and helped catapult conscious writing, editing, and design practices into the mainstream. She’s the author of children’s books and The Conscious Style Guide: A Flexible Approach to Language That Includes, Respects, and Empowers, forthcoming from Little, Brown Spark. She is also the founder of several acclaimed digital tools, including Conscious Style Guide, the first website devoted to conscious language; The Conscious Language Newsletter, its companion publication; Editors of Color, tools for diversifying your staff and sources; the Database of Diverse Databases, over a hundred databases that feature underrepresented communities; and AP vs. Chicago, a guide for anyone who gives “a dollar sign, ampersand, exclamation point, and pound sign about style.”
Conscious Style Guide was named by Poynter as one of the top tools for journalists in 2018 and is recommended by ACES, CMOS, BuzzFeed, SPJ, Poets & Writers, SCBWI, and many others, including NASA. A member of the Chicago Manual of Style Advisory Board, Karen has also been consulted by ACES, EFA, and AP Stylebook. She was the style columnist for Copyediting and has given talks on the craft of writing, conscious editing, and conscious language.
Prior, Karen was a copywriter and editor for over two decades. She ran the editorial department at advertising agencies, where she performed quality control on campaigns for Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, Pixar, Universal, and Warner Bros.
An award-winning fiction writer, Karen has received the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Fellowship (LGBTQ+), a Table 4 Writers Foundation grant, an SCBWI Nonfiction Grant, and the honor of having her flash fiction story “Nurse” in the L.A. Public Library’s permanent collection and Short Story Portal.
Karen’s debut picture book, Whole Whale, a story about making space, was published in 2021 by Barefoot Books, with award-winning illustrator Nelleke Verhoeff on board. So Not Ghoul, illustrated by Bonnie Lui, was published by Page Street Kids in 2022. Doug the Pug and the Kindness Crew, illustrated by Lavanya Naidu, was published by Scholastic in October 2022. Her short story “My Kinda Sorta Badass Move” appeared in Bridges and Islands: Twenty Stories from Multiracial and Multicultural Authors, a young adult anthology from Inkyard Press (winter 2023). For Karen’s picture book recommendations, visit DiversePictureBooks.com.
Newsletters:
- To stay in touch with Karen’s publishing career, subscribe to the Purposeful Prose Newsletter.
- To learn more about conscious language, subscribe to Karen’s Conscious Language Newsletter.
Karen Yin is represented by DeFiore and Company. Inquiries: Laurie Abkemeier.
