Who is the Normative Human?

Who do you picture when someone says, “a person”? How is that defined by our society, and how can we push back on it?

Gender

While gender sensitivity in writing is increasing, many of us were taught in school that correct English grammar means using pronouns that assume masculinity when gender is indeterminant or unknown (though that convention actually originated in the 50s). For example, we were taught to write “a person may expect others to be like him,” “one may like his own way best,” “a child should be treated like he matters,” etc. Even with increasing gender sensitivity, how many times have you heard a driver shouting, “he cut me off!” when no one knew the gender of the driver who did it?

Race, Sexuality, Ability, etc.

Privileged people also tend to assume they are speaking or being told about others with similar privilege, unless it is stated otherwise. How many white people have you heard say something like, “I saw a guy walk in, and then an Asian guy came up to him…” with the clear assumption that “a guy” must be white unless it is stated that he is not? How many white people say, “I saw a white guy walk in”? Similarly, how many heterosexual people identify when someone is not hetero, but not when someone is? How many able-bodied people identify ability only when speaking of someone disabled?

Why Does This Matter?

It is important to avoid language with these assumptions both in speech and in writing, especially mission-based writing. The reality is that there is no normative human being; there is a wonderful diversity of human beings. When we use language that implies one image of normative, it treats everyone else as other and less than.

The Solution

I think we need to go beyond just keeping gender, race, and sexuality indeterminant when they are not relevant. That is a way of avoiding further elevating privileged people, but it does not erase the elevation they already have. What I believe we need to do is intentionally lift up those who have been cast down to the same level as those who have been privileged. That means writing in ways that assume the normative person is female, gender-expansive, BIPOC, queer, disabled, etc. It means intentionally bringing marginalized people into the center where only privileged people were before, and calling on your readers to see how they belong there. It means using she to describe a normative person who is, say, accessing your services – then describing her need to navigate the space in her wheelchair, to have a joint appointment with her wife, and to receive trans-sensitive, culturally-congruent care from another Indigenous person.

Redefining How We Think & Write About Disability

We are taught to think of deafness, blindness, paralysis, Autism, etc. as inherently disabling to people who have them, but they are not actually disabling unless occurring in a society that won’t include them. For example, if our built spaces had no stairs, narrow passageways, or steep slopes, and all meetings occurred sitting down, and all doors were automatic, and other such changes, then using a wheelchair would not actually prevent anyone from fully participating in society and would not be a disability. Or, to give a real-life example, there used to be such a large population of deaf people on the island of Martha’s Vineyard that all hearing people learned sign language. Deafness was not a disability when it did not hamper people from functioning in daily life. A wide range of difference in ability is natural to humanity and is not inherently disabling if society does not make it so.

It is important not to write about people as being deserving of pity because of their differences in ability, but instead to write about them as being deserving of compassion because of how our society excludes them, judges them as inadequate, infantilizes them, and does not give them full access throughout life.

Public health experts have learned to stop writing about being Black as a risk factor for certain health issues, but to write instead about being a target of anti-Black racism as a risk factor for those issues. When will the same be done for people disabled by our society’s refusal to support people with the full, wide range of differences that naturally occur in our species? At least we can begin this change in the ways we think and write about people with disabilities.

Writing with Confidence that’s Contagious to Your Reader

How confident should mission-based writing be? You need to make your reader feel confident in your work and in you, even when you may be writing about things you are unsure of, like what you can do with funding you’re not at all sure you will be awarded. How do you balance your fear of over-promising with the need to promise enough to entice participation and support? Does it sound like vain assumption to write like you are sure your work will be funded, or does it sound insecure to write like you’re not sure? If you come off either too insecure or too vain, then no matter how well you demonstrate the merits of your work, you will turn people off and won’t be successful.

Let’s start by thinking about what it looks like to write too humbly. How many words or phrases do you see in the example below that express uncertainty?

Birch Park is just a small wildlife refuge with a few educational programs, but we believe that if you decide to fund us, we should be able to maintain our paths and clean up litter every week or so. We will also try to start keeping records of some of the species in the park, so that we might be able to tell if their populations decline, and then see if we can help them.

Click to page 2 below to see the answer and keep reading the article.

Mission-Based Writing as Creative Writing

Many people see grant writing and copywriting as necessarily dry and boring, but they’re actually most effective if you use your creative writing skills. The more you can bring your work to life, the more persuasive and memorable your writing will be. And one of the best ways to bring your work to life is to use sensory language that makes readers imagine what it looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels like.

Here’s an example of a purely factual description:

Suzie’s House provides beds, meals, and fun activities for youth experiencing homelessness. We have adult mentors facilitate the group activities, and the youth and mentors cook and eat all meals together. We even have a foosball table.

And here’s another description that’s about the same length, but feels completely different:

Suzie’s House finds youth sleeping on hard park benches in the cold, and brings them inside for cozy beds, foosball, and laughter. Youth and adult mentors connect while cooking and eating favorite meals together, such as pizza and spaghetti.

Try looking at your writing and thinking of where you can add sensory details that will make your readers imagine the challenges you address, how wonderful it feels to participate in your work, and how much better life can be afterward.

This Tiny Word Can Do Wonders
for Your Work

The way you describe your organization or business defines how people connect to it – or don’t. Your word choice matters, even down to what pronoun you use.

You may be thinking, “But we don’t have a choice; an organization is an abstract noun, so grammatically we have to use it.”

Not so.

An organization is also a group of people. As a member of the group, you can use the pronouns we, our, and us. Or if you are a solopreneur, you can use I and me.

4 Ways to Make Your Brand Story Compelling

The word “brand” probably makes most of us think of sterile corporate logos, but in my last Flight Log article, I wrote about how a good brand story actually advances your work by adding human warmth to an overly commercialized and anonymous world. In this Flight Log, we’ll look at four traits that can make your brand story so compelling that your audience not only remembers it for years, but wants to connect with and support your business or organization.

Succeed through Storytelling:
How to Advance Your Work with a Brand Story

There’s a lot of hype about brand stories, but can they really advance your work?

Take my own business is an example: most of you know that I started from scratch in a new field and a new region where I hardly knew anyone, and I quickly created a thriving business … but you may not realize that my primary business-building tool was (and is) my brand story. Many of you first met me at a cafe for tea or just at your office, and I began by telling you how I got to be sitting with you. It felt (and was) genuine, not sales-y, and it got many of you interested in hiring me. That was my brand story.

Endings Matter:
How to Leave Behind the Right Impression

Endings linger. They remain in our minds after we look away and move on to check email or cook dinner. Have you ever read a book or watched a movie that was great right up until its ending left you feeling completely let down? Most of us have, and I’d be willing to bet that whenever you remember it, you think, “It would have been good, but it had a bad ending.” Yet how much attention do you pay to the ending of the marketing or outreach materials, grants or articles you write to advance the great work you do? Here are two tips on writing good endings.

Make People Like Your Organization
Before They Walk in the Door

You want people to feel connected with your organization, to see it as a supportive friend or mentor and feel a sense of loyalty to it… even if they don’t yet have warm relationships with staff members. Writing is often your organization’s first introduction to prospective clients, donor, or grant funders. How can they feel connected with you before they have even met you?

The answer is simple to understand, but more difficult to achieve: humanize your organization by giving it its own personality when you write about it.

How to Write About What Went Wrong

You know you didn’t measure up. Your nonprofit didn’t meet its objectives, or you made a mistake on your customer’s order, or maybe someone even complained to your boss about you. No one’s perfect; it may have been an honest mistake, or there may have been unforeseen circumstances that transformed a simple task into something like trying to fly a kite on a windless day, or sitting on the ground in a perfect breeze, muttering and grumbling as you picked at the knotted mass of the kite’s tail. Whatever it was, something went wrong and you need to write to a stakeholder about it. What do you do?