Inclusive and bias-free language in academic writing

Inclusive and bias-free language in academic writing is the practice of naming people accurately: only the characteristics that matter to the point, at the right level of detail, in the words the people themselves use. APA 7's free pages are the most detailed of the three styles. MLA 9, Chicago 18 and the UK and Australian governments add their own, and they differ on a few points, such as whether "White" takes a capital and whether "person with disability" or "disabled person" comes first.

EdCitation publishes this guide. It reports what each publisher says, read at the source on 26 September 2026, and adds no rules of its own; where the guides differ, it says who says what. The rule that counts for a paper is the one in its brief. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the brief's instructions into a checklist, and shows which of them are for the writer rather than for software.

What does APA 7 mean by bias-free language?

APA 7 asks writers to describe people precisely and to respect the labels they use. The rules are in chapter 5 of the Publication Manual and chapter 3 of the Concise Guide, and APA's free pages cover eight areas: age, disability, gender, participation in research, racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and intersectionality (American Psychological Association, 2023).

Describe at the right level of specificity

Mention a characteristic only when it is relevant: in APA's example, gender belongs in a study of stereotype threat, sexual orientation rarely in one of cognition. When a characteristic is relevant, "when in doubt, be more specific rather than less", because data can be merged later but not split (American Psychological Association, 2024d). "Chinese Americans" is more specific than "Asian Americans"; "65–80 years old" more specific than "over 65".

Respect the labels people use

The second principle is to "call people what they call themselves", accepting that language changes and that members of a group may disagree. APA also asks writers to avoid adjectives used as nouns ("the poor"), labels that equate a person with a condition ("schizophrenics"), and false hierarchies: "normal" as a comparison group, or dominant groups listed first by habit. Its suggested alternatives are alphabetical order or order of sample size (American Psychological Association, 2024d).

What does APA say on each of its eight topics?

Each topic page lists "problematic" and "preferred" terms; the examples below are APA's.

• Age. Give age ranges, means and medians, not "over 65". Use "older adults" or "older people"; avoid "seniors", "elderly" and "the aged", even if participants use them. Write "dementia", not "senility" (American Psychological Association, 2024a).
• Disability. Person-first and identity-first language are both acceptable (see the next section). Avoid "wheelchair bound" ("wheelchair user") and euphemisms such as "special needs" (American Psychological Association, 2024b).
• Gender. Separate gender from sex; avoid "males" and "females" as nouns for adults; use "police officer", "chair" and "humankind". Generic pronouns are covered in our guide to singular they (American Psychological Association, 2024c).
• Participation in research. "Participants" and "subjects" are both acceptable. Write "did not complete", not "failed", and use the active voice, so that participants act rather than are "run" (American Psychological Association, 2024g).
• Racial and ethnic identity. Capitalise racial and ethnic names, write "Asian American" without a hyphen, name the nation or region of origin where possible, and avoid "Caucasian" and "non-White" (American Psychological Association, 2024h).
• Sexual orientation. Use "sexual orientation", not "sexual preference"; avoid "homosexual"; define LGBTQ or a related abbreviation, since APA calls "LGBT" outdated (American Psychological Association, 2024i).
• Socioeconomic status. Report income, education and occupation specifically. Write "people experiencing homelessness", not "the homeless", and "opportunity gap" rather than "achievement gap" (American Psychological Association, 2024j).
• Intersectionality. Report groups by their combined characteristics ("20 participants were African American women") rather than one characteristic at a time (American Psychological Association, 2024f).

One exception matters for students who quote old sources. APA says "quotations should not be changed to accommodate current sensibilities": keep the original term, and comment on it in the text or a footnote (American Psychological Association, 2024e). Quoting dialect and non-standard speech covers the neighbouring case.

Person-first or identity-first language: who says what?

The guides differ here more than anywhere else. Person-first language puts the person before the condition ("a person with epilepsy"); identity-first language leads with the identity ("an autistic person", "a Deaf person").

APA 7: either, unless the group prefers one

APA calls both approaches "fine choices overall", allows mixing them, and says a group's clear preference should be followed. Its reason is stated plainly: people's "expressed preference" about identification "supersedes matters of style" (American Psychological Association, 2024b). Among its preferred terms are "blind person", "Deaf person" and "person with a disability". The page cites Dunn and Andrews (2015), an American Psychologist article on the two approaches.

MLA 9 and Chicago 18

MLA's own free pages say only that the ninth edition added "entirely new sections on inclusive language", with tips on race and ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, and economic or social status (Modern Language Association, 2021). We did not read the MLA Handbook, which is sold rather than published free. A US university library, the Loyola Notre Dame Library in Baltimore, Maryland, summarises its chapter 3 as saying that some groups prefer person-first terms ("a person with alcoholism") and others identity-first ones ("Deaf person") (Loyola Notre Dame Library, 2024).

Chicago 18 has a section headed "Person-first versus identity-first" (5.261), next to one on ableism (5.262) (The Chicago Manual of Style, n.d.-a). The manual is behind a subscription, and we could not read what those sections advise.

The UK and Australian governments

GOV.UK's guide from the Disability Unit and Cabinet Office (2026) treats "disabled" as a description: "Use 'disabled people' not 'the disabled'." Its table lists "disabled person" alongside "person with cerebral palsy" and "person with epilepsy".

The Australian Government Style Manual (2025b) makes person-first the default: "Use person-first language for Australian Government content, unless user research says otherwise." It writes "person with disability" and puts "person with a disability", "deaf person" and "blind person" under "Not this". So "blind person" is preferred in APA's list and avoided in Australia's; both keep the capital D of "Deaf" as the community's own usage.

Should Black and White be capitalised?

APA capitalises both; Chicago prefers "Black" and allows "White"; MLA, as reported, asks for consistency.

• APA 7: "Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized", so "Black" and "White"; "Indigenous" and "Aboriginal" always take a capital (American Psychological Association, 2024h).
• Chicago: in June 2020 the Press began preferring a capital for "Black" as a racial and ethnic identity, allowing one for "White", as "a guideline" rather than a requirement (University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff, 2020). The 18th edition's 8.39 capitalises "Indigenous" for people, "usually" capitalises "Black", and capitalises "White" "if a particular author or publisher prefers" (The Chicago Manual of Style, n.d.-b).
• MLA 9: the library summary advises writers to be mindful of capitalisation and consistent throughout (Loyola Notre Dame Library, 2024).
• UK government: the Race Disparity Unit (2024) writes "Black people" and "White people" in its own examples, does not use "BAME" or "non-White", and orders ethnic groups alphabetically, with "Other" last.

Where else do the guides part company?

On age terms; on gender they have converged.

"Seniors" and "elderly"

APA lists "seniors", "senior citizens" and "the elderly" as problematic. The Australian Government Style Manual (2025a) agrees about "elderly", which it calls not acceptable, but lists "senior Australians or seniors" under "Write this", along with "older people" and "retirees". Both accept "older people".

Gender-neutral wording

APA, MLA and Chicago now accept singular they, MLA encouraging it "to avoid making or enabling assumptions about gender" (Modern Language Association, 2020). Chicago's 18th edition made the generic use acceptable in formal writing (CMOS Shop Talk, 2024) and has sections on gender-neutral nouns and pronoun options (5.263–5.266). The history is in our singular they guide.

APA, MLA, Chicago and government guides compared

"Not read" means the manual's text sits behind a subscription or purchase; "not stated" means the free pages we read do not cover it.

How do you apply bias-free language in an assignment?

Follow the brief's style, then the people you write about:

1. Find the style and edition. EdCitation's free Check your paper pulls them out of the brief with the sentence that set them; our brief and rubric guide covers the rest of the brief.
2. Read that style's own pages. APA's are free; MLA's and Chicago's manuals are sold.
3. Find out what the people you write about call themselves. APA suggests asking participants or consulting self-advocacy groups, and the Australian Style Manual asks for user research.
4. Include only relevant characteristics, precisely. Ranges rather than "over 65"; a named condition rather than a category.
5. Quote sources as written, and comment on a dated term rather than changing it.
6. Cite the guidance you rely on in Cite a source, which builds each entry from the publisher's record, and check the list in Verify references.

What did Check your paper do with a bias-free language instruction?

It listed the instruction for the writer, not for software. We pasted a short brief of our own into Check your paper:

Write a 1,500-word essay on how older adults experience work after retirement age. Use at least six peer-reviewed sources published in the last ten years. Format the paper and the references in APA Style, 7th edition. Use bias-free language as the APA Publication Manual (7th ed.) sets it out: describe people at the level of specificity the topic needs, and use the terms the groups you write about use for themselves. Use 12-point Times New Roman, double spacing and 1-inch margins.

The checklist came back with eight rules, each beside its sentence: Citation style "APA 7"; Word count 1500; Sources (peer-reviewed) at least 6; Source dates "From the last 10 years"; Font "Times New Roman"; Font size 12 pt; Line spacing 2; Margins 1 in. The bias-free sentence came back whole under "What it asks you to do, which no rule can test".

No EdCitation tool chooses or changes the words you use about people, and EdCitation never writes or rewrites any part of a paper. With the Max plan ($24 a month), Theoretics QA weighs a finished paper against each instruction in its brief, quoting the paper and rewriting nothing. The Pro plan ($8 a month) adds Mechanics QA: formatting against the style, leftovers in the file, citations, numbers, and the typing slips that get past a spell-checker.

The references, from the record

Where EdCitation does the work is the reference list, and there it is the best tool for the job: Cite a source copies each detail from the publisher's own record rather than predicting it, as a chatbot does. We pasted in the DOI of the Dunn and Andrews article; the APA 7 entry below came from Crossref, screened with no retraction found:

Dunn, D. S., & Andrews, E. E. (2015). Person-first and identity-first language: Developing psychologists’ cultural competence using disability language. American Psychologist, 70(3), 255–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038636

We then gave Verify references three entries. The article and the GOV.UK page were both verified, the page with the reason "The page is at this address, and its title matches". APA's disability page was marked "Could not check" ("The page at this address gave no title to compare"), which is not the same as not found: the page exists, and APA's servers block automated reading, as our own plain requests found. None of the four free tools asks for an account.

Quick questions

Is person-first or identity-first language correct in APA 7?

Both. APA 7 accepts either or a mix, and says a group's clearly known preference overrides matters of style.

Does APA 7 capitalise Black and White?

Yes. APA treats racial and ethnic groups as proper nouns, so both take capitals. Chicago 18 usually capitalises Black and capitalises White when an author or publisher prefers.

What does MLA say about inclusive language?

The ninth edition of the MLA Handbook added new sections on it, covering race and ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, and economic or social status. MLA's free Style Center encourages singular they; the handbook's detail is not published free.

Is "elderly" acceptable in academic writing?

Not in APA 7, which prefers "older adults" or "older people", nor in the Australian Government Style Manual. The Australian manual does accept "seniors", which APA avoids.

Can EdCitation check my paper for bias-free language?

The free Check your paper reads a bias-free language instruction out of the brief and lists it for you to follow. Theoretics QA, in Max, judges a finished paper against the brief's own instructions, quoting it, and no EdCitation tool rewrites your wording.

References

• American Psychological Association. (2023, November). Bias-free language. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language
• American Psychological Association. (2024a, October). Age. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/age
• American Psychological Association. (2024b, October). Disability. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/disability
• American Psychological Association. (2024c, October). Gender. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/gender
• American Psychological Association. (2024d, October). General principles for reducing bias. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/general-principles
• American Psychological Association. (2024e, October). Historical context. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/historical-context
• American Psychological Association. (2024f, October). Intersectionality. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/intersectionality
• American Psychological Association. (2024g, October). Participation in research. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/research-participation
• American Psychological Association. (2024h, October). Racial and ethnic identity. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities
• American Psychological Association. (2024i, October). Sexual orientation. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/sexual-orientation
• American Psychological Association. (2024j, October). Socioeconomic status. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/socioeconomic-status
• Australian Government Style Manual. (2025a, February 19). Age diversity. https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/accessible-and-inclusive-content/inclusive-language/age-diversity
• Australian Government Style Manual. (2025b, August 26). Disability and neurodiversity. https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/accessible-and-inclusive-content/inclusive-language/disability-and-neurodiversity
• The Chicago Manual of Style. (n.d.-a). Chapter 5: Grammar and usage [Table of contents]. In The Chicago Manual of Style (18th ed.). https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed18/part2/ch05/toc.html
• The Chicago Manual of Style. (n.d.-b). What's new in the 18th edition. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/what-s-new.html
• CMOS Shop Talk. (2024, April 16). Announcing The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition. https://cmosshoptalk.com/2024/04/16/announcing-the-chicago-manual-of-style-18th-edition/
• Disability Unit and Cabinet Office. (2026, June 17). Inclusive language: Words to use and avoid when writing about disability. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-communication/inclusive-language-words-to-use-and-avoid-when-writing-about-disability
• Dunn, D. S., & Andrews, E. E. (2015). Person-first and identity-first language: Developing psychologists’ cultural competence using disability language. American Psychologist, 70(3), 255–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038636
• Loyola Notre Dame Library. (2024, May 6). MLA and inclusive language. In MLA style guide, 9th edition. https://guides.lndlibrary.org/c.php?g=1190811&p=8784900
• Modern Language Association. (2020, March 4). How do I use singular they? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/using-singular-they/
• Modern Language Association. (2021, April 22). How does the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook compare with the eighth edition? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/handbook-editions-comparison-chart/
• Race Disparity Unit. (2024, October). Writing about ethnicity. Ethnicity Facts and Figures, GOV.UK. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/writing-about-ethnicity/
• University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. (2020, June 22). Black and White: A matter of capitalization. CMOS Shop Talk. https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/06/22/black-and-white-a-matter-of-capitalization/