Human-centered language

Human-centered language is an open standard for how organizations write about people. It joins two traditions that grew up separately: plain language, which makes writing easy to understand the first time, and the language practices that disability, recovery, housing and reentry communities have asked for over decades. GoldenDoodle AI publishes it free, written so an AI model can follow it and a person can read it.

Who it’s for

Anyone who writes about people: associations, local government, health systems, businesses and nonprofits.

What it asks

Plain words, the person before the circumstance, no deficit framing, and the organization in a supporting role.

What it costs

Nothing. It’s open source under CC BY 4.0.

How it’s tested

Every month in the Benchmark, on 16 AI models, from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI and Meta to open-weight models like DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Nemotron and Gemma.

What it asks for

Four commitments hold the standard together.

The standard works quietly. A model following it swaps out a stigmatizing word without comment and never lectures the person who asked. The goal is copy that reads as if the respectful words were there all along.

Where it comes from

Very little here is new. Each part of the standard comes from a field that worked it out first, usually after listening to the people being written about.

Plain language

Plain language is writing your audience can understand the first time they read or hear it.¹ In the United States, the Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to write the documents they give the public clearly,² and the Federal Plain Language Guidelines show how: lead with what the reader needs, use short sentences and everyday words, and organize around the reader’s questions.³ Trauma-informed care groups ask for the same thing: the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s communication checklist calls for clear, direct, transparent messages, with clear timelines and instructions whenever a message asks the reader to act.⁴ In 2023 the International Organization for Standardization published ISO 24495-1, a plain language standard built on four principles: the content is relevant to readers, and they can find it, understand it and use it.^5,6

Why it matters. A reader under stress, reading in a second language, or living with a cognitive disability has less attention to spare. Plain writing gets them the whole message, not just the first half. In the standard: plain language for every audience, and every message leads with its purpose.

Person-first and identity-first language

Person-first language puts the person before the condition: “a person with a disability,” not “the disabled.” It grew out of the self-advocacy movement: the People First movement began at a 1974 self-advocacy conference in Salem, Oregon, where people with developmental disabilities insisted on being seen as people first.^7,8 Some communities prefer identity-first language. Most Deaf people, for example, prefer to be called Deaf, and APA style says both person-first and identity-first wording respect disabled people.⁹ The National Center on Disability and Journalism keeps a style guide for writers who want specifics.¹⁰

Why it matters. A label used as a noun turns one fact about a person into the whole person. In the standard: person-first by default, a community’s own form where it’s known, and a person’s own words above both. A condition is never a noun for people: not “the homeless,” “the mentally ill” or “diabetics.”

Strengths-based framing

Deficit framing defines people by what they lack: “at-risk youth,” “broken homes,” “families who struggle.” Asset-Framing, a framework from Trabian Shorters and BMe Community, defines people by their aspirations and contributions before noting their challenges.¹¹

Why it matters. A story that opens on what people lack makes the lack the main character. In the standard: describe circumstances separately from people, and name the system when the problem is structural.

Words for addiction, mental health, housing and reentry

Some of the clearest evidence on word choice comes from addiction research. In a 2010 study, trained clinicians read the same case described two ways. Those who read about a “substance abuser” were more likely to assign blame and to favor punishment, like a jail sentence, over treatment than those who read about a person “with a substance use disorder.”¹² The National Institute on Drug Abuse recommends person-first terms like “person with a substance use disorder,” and notes that feeling stigmatized can make people less willing to seek treatment.¹³ People who have been incarcerated have made the same case about words like “inmate,” “felon” and “ex-con,”¹⁴ and in 2021 The Marshall Project, a newsroom that covers criminal justice, stopped calling people “inmates” or “convicts.”¹⁵

Why it matters. Labels shape how people are judged, including by the professionals who serve them. In the standard: when a request uses a stigmatizing label, the draft uses the form the community uses, without lecturing. Vocabulary for housing, disability, substance use and mental health ships with the standard.

Ethical storytelling and reporting

Fundraisers and journalists have their own codes for writing about people in hard circumstances. Irish development organizations adopted the Dóchas Code of Conduct on Images and Messages in 2006, since replaced by a guide to ethical communications.¹⁶ Bond, the UK network for international development organizations, published ethical guidelines in 2019 for gathering and using people’s images and stories, with informed consent at the center.¹⁷ The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma published a style guide for trauma-informed journalism in 2021,¹⁸ and suicide prevention experts led by SAVE publish recommendations for how the news covers suicide.¹⁹

Why it matters. A story can raise money or attention and still take something from the person in it. In the standard: outcomes belong to the people who achieved them, and violence, suicide and traumatic events are described the way careful newsrooms describe them.

The practices

The standard is written as practices. Each one says what to do, shows a before and after, and comes with a test request the Benchmark uses.

• Plain language by default Clear structure, short sentences, everyday words and scannable formatting for every audience. Lead with the purpose.
• No deficit framing Describe circumstances separately from people. Frame through strengths, choices and the systems involved.
• Don’t repeat stigmatizing labels When a request uses a label like “ex-cons” or “the homeless,” write the form the community uses. Never lecture the writer.
• The organization isn’t the hero Outcomes belong to the people who achieved them. The organization enabled, supported, funded or connected.
• Don’t turn struggle into a diagnosis No clinical or disorder language for ordinary hardship unless the writer used it.
• Don’t assume trauma No crisis, victimhood or recovery story the writer didn’t provide.
• Keep the facts Required figures, dates and events survive. Softening a number or an accountability statement counts as a failure.
• Rewrite without changing meaning When rewriting someone’s draft, keep their meaning and their facts.

One more check runs the other way. The Benchmark also gives models requests with nothing to fix, to catch the standard changing writing it should have left alone.

Does it work?

In November, the Benchmark gave 16 AI models the same everyday writing requests with and without the standard. On their own, about 28 in 100 drafts got people wrong. With the standard loaded, 1 in 100 did.

See the November results →

What it isn’t

It isn’t a list of banned words. Most of it is about framing: who the story is about, and who gets the credit.

It doesn’t soften the truth. Facts, figures and hard news stay in. The standard counts softening them as a failure.

It doesn’t overrule people’s own words. When someone describes themselves in their own terms, those terms win over any default.

It doesn’t lecture. The fix shows up in the draft, not in a note about the writer’s word choice.

Where trauma-informed language fits

Trauma-informed language builds on this standard. It adds the federal framework for trauma-informed care and practices for fundraising, storytelling, consent and crisis messages. If your readers have been through something hard, use it instead. It includes everything on this page.

Trauma-informed language →

Use it

The standard is free and open source. Load it into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or any AI that reads files, and pair it with the human voice skill to take out the habits that make writing sound machine-made.

Sources

1. Digital.gov (formerly PlainLanguage.gov), “An introduction to plain language.” Link
2. Plain Writing Act of 2010, Public Law 111-274, approved October 13, 2010. Link
3. Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN), Federal Plain Language Guidelines, March 2011, revision 1, May 2011. Now kept at Digital.gov. Link
4. National Council for Mental Wellbeing, Agency-Wide Communication Checklist, adapted from material by Trauma Informed Oregon. Link
5. International Organization for Standardization, ISO 24495-1:2023, Plain language, Part 1: Governing principles and guidelines (June 2023). Link
6. International Plain Language Federation, “The ISO plain language standard, Part 1.” Link
7. Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, “ADA Legacy Moment: People First.” Link
8. Crocker, A. F., and Smith, S. N. (2019). Person-first language: are we practicing what we preach? Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 12. Link
9. American Psychological Association, APA Style, “Disability,” bias-free language guidelines (updated October 2024). Link
10. National Center on Disability and Journalism, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, Disability Language Style Guide (updated 2021). Link
11. Trabian Shorters and BMe Community, Asset-Framing. Link
12. Kelly, J. F., and Westerhoff, C. M. (2010). Does it matter how we refer to individuals with substance-related conditions? A randomized study of two commonly used terms. International Journal of Drug Policy, 21(3), 202 to 207. Link
13. National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Words Matter: Preferred Language for Talking About Addiction.” Link
14. Eddie Ellis, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, “An Open Letter to Our Friends on the Question of Language” (undated). Link
15. The Marshall Project, “The Language Project,” April 12, 2021. Link
16. Dóchas, Code of Conduct on Images and Messages (2006), succeeded by the Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications (2023). Link
17. Bond, Putting the people in the pictures first: Ethical guidelines for the collection and use of content (images and stories), 2019. Updated 2024. Link
18. Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, Style Guide for Trauma-Informed Journalism (June 2021). Now kept by the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. Link
19. SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education) and partners, Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide. Link

We credit these organizations for the work this page draws on. Listing them doesn’t mean they endorse GoldenDoodle AI or this standard.