How do I turn on Word's inclusiveness "spellchecker"?
In the last week, I've seen a few news articles pop up in my feed highlighting a function in Microsoft Word that enables it to check for non-inclusive or biased language and to offer suggestions for correction. Depending on the media organization the article originated from, this is either presented with a positive or negative slant, but Office has a lot of features that users choose to adopt or not, and this is just one more of them.
The reality is that when speaking or writing a large proportion, if not a majority, of us occasionally use language that while not meant to be offensive might cause a level of offense to some due to it being non-inclusive or biased. In most cases, it isn't that the speaker or writer aimed to offend anyone, just that this biased language is built into our culture of communication, and we can only address it through acknowledging that fact and making steps to change that culture to be more inclusive. In many cases, the person who used the language is entirely unaware of its potential to appear biased until it is pointed out to them.
Microsoft's tool seeks to do this, providing an explanation of why an item has been flagged and offering alternatives. An example that has been used in several of the articles I've read is providing alternatives for the commonly used technical term "blacklist" - here is how Word responds to this term with these features turned on.
Word flags the term “blacklist” and offers and explanation and alternatives.
The feature is turned off by default, but you can easily turn it on. In Word select the File menu and click on Options then head to the Proofing menu.
The inclusiveness editor options are on the Options menu under Proofing
Under Writing Style, click Settings, and you are presented with a list of options of what Word will check for when offering you suggestions.
The Settings options of the Writing Style feature offer the available Inclusiveness items
Under Inclusiveness you have the following options:
Age Bias
Cultural Bias
Ethnic Slurs
Gender Bias
Gender-Neutral Pronouns
Gender-Specific Language
Racial Bias
Sexual Orientation Bias
Socioeconomic Bias
At writing, it does not appear these options are available in other Office suite applications other than Word, but it is available in Word Online if you open the Editor panel under the Home ribbon.
