APA Style Citation Guide 7th Edition

The American Psychological Association emphasizes the need to talk about all people with inclusivity and respect. Writers using APA Style must strive to use language that is free of bias and avoid perpetuating prejudicial beliefs or demeaning attitudes in their writing. Just as you have learned to check what you write for spelling, grammar, and wordiness, practice reading your work for bias.

The guidelines for bias-free language contain both general guidelines for writing about people without bias across a range of topics and specific guidelines that address the individual characteristics of age, disability, gender, participation in research, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. These guidelines and recommendations were crafted by panels of experts on APA’s bias-free language committees and should be used in conjunction with APA’s inclusive language guidelines.

The following are general principles for writing about all people and their personal characteristics without bias.

Avoiding language that perpetuates harm or offense toward members of marginalized communities through our communications.

Gender offers an added layer of specificity when interpreting patterns or phenomena of human behavior. However, the terms related to gender and sex are often conflated, making precision essential to writing about gender and/or sex without bias. The language related to gender identity and sexual orientation has also evolved rapidly, and it is important to use the terms people use to describe themselves (Singh, 2017; for how to determine appropriate terms, see General Principles for Reducing Bias; for a list of terms and definitions, see APA, n.d.).