The “inclusiveness checker” highlights phrases or words the firm believes could offend someone based on their gender, age, ethnicity or sexual ori

Microsoft launches ‘woke’ spelling tool

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2022-01-14 21:00:02

The “inclusiveness checker” highlights phrases or words the firm believes could offend someone based on their gender, age, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

The Word feature, which is able to look for “socioeconomic bias”, then suggests alternatives deemed to be more “woke”.

It also recommends amending “Mrs Thatcher” to “Ms Thatcher”. In addition, it proposes users change “mankind” in Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind” to “humankind or “humanity”.

Other words to change include “headmaster” (Word suggests “principal”), “master” (“expert”) and “manpower” (“workforce”).

In a statement, Microsoft said: “Microsoft understands that not every Editor suggestion may be suitable for all users and all scenarios. That’s why we let users be in control of their final output. Editor is a completely optional tool that users can turn on or off at any point. Editor does not make any autocorrections.

“The user has control over which suggestions they choose to use, if any. They will be able to turn on and off each one of them individually.”

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