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Gender-neutral language (gender neutrality in English) avoids constructions that might be interpreted by some readers as an unnecessary reinforcement of traditional stereotypes. Gender-neutral language does not inherently convey a particular viewpoint, political agenda or ideal. Examples of non-neutral language that can often be easily avoided are:
- A masculine or feminine pronoun to refer to a generic or hypothetical person
- Man to stand for persons in general regardless of gender, either as a separate item (man's greatest discoveries), a prefix (mankind, manmade), or a suffix (businessman, fireman)
- Uncommon gender-marked terms (conductress, career woman, male nurse, aviatrix), with the possible implication that the participation of the subject's gender is uncommon, unexpected or somehow inappropriate
- Non-parallel expressions (man and wife rather than husband and wife). Another example of lack of parallelism would be the use, in the same article, of first names for women and last names for men, unless the people involved have a documented preference in this regard.
The Manual of Style section on gender-neutral language states, "Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision." Situations this does not apply to include:
- Direct quotations (e.g. "All men are created equal" should not be altered to "All people are created equal")
- The titles of works (e.g. A Man on the Moon should not be altered to A Human Being on the Moon)
- Proper names of things (e.g. Craftsmen Industries should not be altered to Artisan Industries)
- Cases where all referents are of one gender (e.g. when talking about an all-female school it is unnecessary to alter "If any student broke that rule, she was severely punished" to "Any student who broke the rule was severely punished")
- When the subject prefers a gendered term. This includes a woman preferring a "masculine" term, for example: "From 1998 to 2000, she [Esther Dyson] was the founding chairman [not chairwoman or chairperson] of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.".