Book Description

The Women’s Media Center—founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan—presents its first comprehensive guide to using accurate, inclusive, creative, and clear language. At a time when language is too often used to “spin” instead of communicate, Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language was created to help everyone understand and be understood. Unspinning the Spin offers the convenience of a dictionary, the authority of a usage guide, the helpfulness of a thesaurus, and the wit and wisdom of an entertaining and authoritative teacher of the subject. Organized alphabetically for easy use, with cross-references to related words, phrases, and issues, this book goes beyond the scope of the usual reference book. It mines a wide variety of fields to present the background, current uses, accuracy, alternatives, and best practices for choosing and decoding common words and phrases, and offers a trove of suggestions for bias-free language. Unspinning the Spin is a practical, indispensable how-to that is fun to read. It’s invaluable for journalists, bloggers, students, teachers, government officials, and communications professionals, and it will be compelling for any reader who loves the English language. The author, Rosalie Maggio, has been an expert and widely read authority on language for more than 25 years. She is the author of the award-winning Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage and the editor of The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women. Unspinning the Spin includes a preface by Robin Morgan, feminist activist, former editor-in-chief of Ms., and award-winning author of more than 20 books; and Gloria Steinem, writer, activist, editor, bestselling author, and cofounder of Ms. This book is the first publication of WMC Press, the publishing arm of the Women’s Media Center. “Given the growing awareness of sexism imbedded in our everyday speech, we—and the news media in particular—need alternative language. Unspinning the Spin should be a welcome resource for journalists, and for anyone who works with words, to consult. At last we have a comprehensive, authoritative (and funny!), feminist Fowler’s.” —Suzanne Braun Levine, author, first editor of Ms., and first woman editor of The Columbia Journalism Review “Language is power and debates are won or lost on how the arguments are shaped. Anyone who cares about politics, power, and the histories we make today will find Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language a reference for all seasons.” —Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher of The Nation