Out with the old words

Twitter's engineering teams are working to change terms that touch on race, sex and ability, Oliver said. Terms and recommended replacements include:

• Whitelist becomes allowlist.
• Blacklist becomes denylist.
• Master/slave becomes leader/follower, primary/replica or primary/standby.
• Grandfathered becomes legacy status.
• Gendered pronouns (for example "guys") become folks, people, you all, y'all.
• Gendered pronouns (for example "he" or "his") become they or their.
• Man hours becomes person hours or engineer hours.
• Sanity check becomes quick check, confidence check or coherence check.
• Dummy value becomes placeholder value or sample value.

Inclusive language seeks to treat all people with respect, dignity, and impartiality, said Twitter engineering chief Michael Montano in a June 25 email to all Twitter employees. It is constructed to bring everyone into the group and exclude no one, and it is essential for creating an environment where everyone feels welcome.

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