You are settling down to study and you open Spotify on your computer. A window pops up explaining changes to the terms and conditions. You glance through and click Accept.
You’re installing a new modem in your apartment. You read through the set-up guide and follow the steps outlined.
You are setting up your online banking. You follow each prompt as it displays on your laptop.
How many people consider the author of these texts? I’m willing to guess not many. That’s the purpose of this kind of writing, after all. Policies, user guides, instructions: They’re supposed to feel seamless and straightforward. And unbiased…right?
That’s where you’re wrong. Writing is not neutral. Even the best, most plain, most simple-to-understand writing, cannot be neutral.
Let me break it down. Every paragraph, every sentence, and every word is a choice made by writer. If they are good at their job, the writer uses certain guidelines to ensure clear, effective communication. Take the author of your modem set-up guide, for example. Let’s call her Sam. She should use active voice, write short sentences, and explain any technical jargon you don’t understand. While Sam may try to minimize the influence of her perspective and preferences, ultimately, she’s still human, and every word is still a choice. And our choices are always influenced by our opinions and perspective.
Bias is a bit of a buzzword in this age of fake news. Who’s writing? What’s their agenda? But when the writing in question is, for lack of a better term, boring, we rarely think to examine the perspective from which it was written. It’s even harder to find the perspective when the writing is supposed to seem voiceless.
Let’s go back to your Spotify terms and conditions.
Sometimes the bias lies not in what’s there, but in what isn’t included.
“Thanks for choosing Spotify (“Spotify,” “we,” “us,” “our”). Spotify provides personalised services with social and interactive features for streaming music and other content as well as other products and services that may be developed from time to time.” (Spotify.com)
There’s no definition of “streaming” or “content” or “social and interactive features”. This is likely an assumption that if you’ve gotten as far as creating a Spotify account, you likely understand the services it offers. This assumption is necessary to write the most appropriate document for the audience, but it is nevertheless a bias in the writing.
What about someone with a learning disability? An English Language Learner? Your grandparent? Would they be able to understand without these definitions?
When you dig into what writing does and does not include, it exposes the underlying assumptions of the writer, no matter how boring and neutral the writing may seem.
So, if you can’t write in a neutral way. What should you do?
Be aware of the biases in your writing.
Every person brings their own experiences to their writing. We can’t separate our personal identities and our professional skills. The real problem comes when we assume writing is neutral, not from the writing itself. If we’re aware of the bias of a piece of writing, we can account for it.
It’s not about avoiding bias; it’s about being aware of it. It’s about recognizing the perspective from which a text was written, and using that to enhance your understanding of the writing.
In fact, your biases can make your writing stronger. It’s not a bad thing to draw from your personal experiences. Maybe Sam, our enterprising user guide writer, is a highly visual learner. Maybe she decides to incorporate both clear instructions and effective diagrams with captions in her manual. While this decision is supported by the guidelines of her job, her decision to include them is also influenced by her personal experiences. And when you’re struggling to install internet in your home, those diagrams help you understand the installation process a little faster. Writing is never neutral, and that’s okay, as long as you’re aware of its biases.