Check out TJA's refreshed style guide
Our new style guide webpage has revised and expanded materials, interactive search options, and more.
The updated and expanded Trans Journalists Association style guide is now live!
All told, more than 20 TJA members contributed to the guide’s revision, including editors, reporters, and newsroom leaders with backgrounds in local, national, and international media organizations across beats and mediums. We also consulted with other journalism affinity organizations to review specific entries.
Thanks to the team at Hairysquid Ltd., who generously donated their time and web development skills, we now have a searchable landing page for all of our style guidance. We hope this will improve its usability — and help us update it more quickly as language evolves.
A summary of overall changes
- Restructured the guide to organize it by sections, which are: high-level editorial best practices, gender/name/pronoun usage, politicized or inaccurate phrases, topical guides, visuals standards, glossary, and further reading
- Incorporated new entries based on feedback, questions, and requests from standards desks, reporters, and editors across the journalism industry
- Expanded enterprise guidance to include common reporting issues and limitations during breaking news events
- Edited existing entries to focus on cultural competence and context, as well as advice applicable across beats and mediums
Other changes
- Updated materials and references that were accurate as of 2019 but are now out of date
- Removed references to statistics and other quickly changing information that would have to be regularly updated
- Combined related entries
- Removed topics related to newsroom/workplace policy, which will be included in a separated, expanded newsroom policy best practices resource
Additions
- Medium-specific best practices for multimedia reporting, which we hope to continue expanding
- Entries to address questions TJA has received about what to do during breaking news events
- Established beat-specific topical guides on common coverage areas
- Included best practices resources from other journalism organizations, where applicable
If you run into a reporting or editing issue that isn’t addressed in this guide — or you’re just trying to figure out how to interpret and apply our guidance — please reach out to our style guide editor at styleguide@transjournalists.org.
To support the style guide, and work like it, you can make a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor.
