1 minute read

no full stops on pull quotes

Developments in technology are helping to push style guide changes on. Typewriter, The Guardian’s in-house style guide checker, suggests edits as you write copy, allowing editors to focus on stylistic changes as opposed to correcting common spelling mistakes. But as Jonathon Herbert, software developer at The Guardian, attests, “you can’t ever replace judgement, or thinking, or taste.”

The LGBTQ+ community is at the forefront when it comes to the evolution of language, but all three journalists agree that the best method to represent readers, as was the case with the “antisemitism” note, is to listen. And to actively seek out a wide range of sources to better understand.

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“We have a committee of counsellors,” explains Blumsom “and we’re doing our homework in terms of gendered language.”

“I think that our readers really appreciate that we work in an inclusive space that is always trying to develop,” confrms Larsson Peñeda, “and we talk openly about it all the time in the offce.”

So which singular text can summarise a journalist’s allegiances in war and their opinions on abortion? Their views on the environment alongside their solidarity with religious groups and the visually impaired? And all within a word count less than this article? A style guide can.