Writing About Race with “Inclusion” in Mind — The Publishing Industry Standard

By A.E. Williams

Back in January, I wrote in my first post that I’d provide a “tell-all” about the publishing industry and give writers and editors a look into how all that works — how publishers take on books, develop them, produce them, and then release them out into the world.

When I landed my first Big 5 publisher back in 2021, I was sent a packet with guidelines about use of dashes, apostrophes, em dashes, etc. Another thing I received was a thirteen-page inclusive language guide. Before that day, I didn’t really know what inclusive language was. Like I said in my first post, I was pretty new to the industry at the time.

Inclusive Language is synonymous with conscious language which sets out to avoid implicit biases, stereotypes, and language that can be used to discriminate against someone for their race, gender, religion, socioeconomic background, etc. That’s right, folks. The publishing industry is out to avoid these things.

The intention of the document isn’t to dictate to the editor or writer, but to provide some context around areas where language can be potentially harmful to a specific group of people.

With all that being said, I wanted to write this particular article to expose some of the important work in publishing aimed at making language in the books they publish more “inclusive” — making it acceptable for all audiences. While I don’t always agree with the…