‘Gay is not yet a permitted term’: A look at a 1980s-era Star stylebook shows how both the paper and society have evolved

The Star is moving to new headquarters at Front Street and Spadina Avenue soon, so we’re all cleaning out our desks and deciding what to keep and what to toss.

It’s in this context that a colleague at the newspaper reached out to me recently to ask whether I was interested in taking a look at an old Toronto Star stylebook from 1983 that he obtained.

The Star and other Torstar publications, like many other media outlets in Canada, follows The Canadian Press (CP) wire service’s stylebook, which provides a wide array of guidance for news editors and writers in this country, including which words to capitalize and how to spell names and places around the world.

The goal is to have common standards, which helps cut down on confusion for readers and staff alike.

Though we follow CP’s rules, the Star also has its own stylebook, last updated three months ago, which departs from the CP guidebook in several instances, delves deeper into some of CP’s directions and deals with matters germane to the Star’s local coverage.

Flipping through the Star’s 1983 version and comparing it to what we have now, it provided some interesting insights into an important topic the Star has grappled with over the decades: how we identify people.

Whether it’s the words we use to refer to our seniors, police officers, those with mental or physical challenges, members of the LGBTQ community, or racialized groups including Indigenous people, the Star’s stylebook has evolved over the decades, reflecting the changing ways in which we as a society view one another.

Take age, for example. The old Star stylebook from the early ’80s talks about “avoiding words like aged and elderly” and says writers should “consider it a rule of thumb that nobody under 80 is elderly.”

“Homes for the aged” is acceptable, the guide says, though it cautions against the use of “condescending terms” like “spry” and “feisty” when reporting on someone’s 100th birthday, for example.

The current stylebook provides no specific guidance on how to describe the more mature members of our society, though Anthony Collins, a team editor at the Star and our style chief, tells me the newspaper takes care “not to portray older adults as elderly or frail.”

This approach might have avoided the criticism I heard recently from some readers when one of our columnists described a Toronto couple, ages 69 and 71, as “elderly.”

“(The Star) should be more aware that 70-year-olds today are youthful and active,” complained Rita, a 72-year-old reader who argued the couple weren’t old enough to be termed “elderly.”

“Let’s not attach labels to people. Simply reporting age should be good enough,” she said.

As a short form for police officer, “cop” has the distinction of being a “banned” term in the 1980s-era stylebook. It’s a word one can “almost never get away with, except perhaps in a very lighthearted piece,” the stylebook advises.

Today the word is fairly commonly used in the Star. I found over 11,000 hits in our database of Star stories when I searched using the words “cop” and “police” together.

The older style guide reflects some of the gender conflicts of the day. For example, the book decrees the word “chairman” is to be used — “not chairperson or chairwoman.”

The word chairman “has no sex,” the guide states. Today, all three designations are used in the Star, though we prefer the gender-neutral “chair,” says Collins.

In the early 1980s, few women or members of racialized communities held senior positions within newspapers, including the Star.

Looking back on this time through our present-day lens, the comments in the 1980s stylebook concerning Indigenous people demonstrate the colonial baggage we still carried.

The section on “Indians” — a term our current style guide says is considered offensive and should usually be reserved for legal or historical references, such as to Canada’s Indian Act — sums up their contributions in this dismissive way: “It should not be forgotten that while the old Indian ways may be regrettably gone, (they) not only taught us how to harvest corn, squash, pumpkin and tobacco and how to use canoes … but their languages gave us the words, among many others, Ottawa, Saskatchewan and Canada.”

Today, our understanding of Indigenous people runs much deeper, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; extensive coverage of the horrible legacy of our former residential school system; and news stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, land claims battles and more.

In that vein, the Star now capitalizes the word “Indigenous” — we now capitalize “Black” too, in reference to Black people — as part of a long sought-after sign of respect.

There’s also been an evolution in how we refer to members of the LGBTQ community. The old Star style guide says the words “gay and gays are not yet permitted terms.”

Our current stylebook urges caution when using the word “gay” to refer to women or as shorthand for the entire LGBTQ community.

“Many in the community, including some men, do not identify as gay and do not feel the word represents them,” reads the current guide, adding it’s best when possible to ask people how they prefer to be described.

“Over the years, we’ve updated our stylebook in lots of ways to be more respectful and inclusive of the communities we serve, but when it comes to identity it’s not always easy or clear-cut,” Collins tells me.

Many of the changes were slow to come, says Collins, and were often the result of advocacy from both within and outside the Star. It’s also about striking a balance between “adopting the latest terminology and using plain language most readers can understand.”

Collins says the stylebook is always a work in progress.

Just like we are as a society, I would add.

Donovan Vincent is the Star’s Public Editor and based in Toronto. Reach him by email at publiced@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @donovanvincent