I'm a young folk who can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today we'll talk about person-first language and when to use italics.

A few months ago in a segment about the difference between continuously and continually, I wanted

to give an example of something that's done continually.

So I wrote, many type 1 diabetics have to give themselves shots multiple times a day.

They are continually giving themselves shots.

And soon after I received an email from Rick and Kelona British Columbia that read,

quote, you refer to those of us with diabetes as diabetics.

Diabetes doesn't define our life.

That is, there's much more to us than a disease that we have.

So the modern trend apparently is to refer to people with diabetes rather than diabetics.

Do you refer to people with cancer as cancerics, people with colds as coldics, unquote?

And you know what, that is an excellent point, Rick.

And the term you hear a lot for that kind of rephrasing is person-first language, which

coincidentally was something I started looking into right after I wrote that piece about

continually and continuously and wish I had done so a week earlier.

Person-first language means you're putting the emphasis on the person and not on the

disease.

It's a little longer to say people with diabetes than diabetics, but it honors them more

as people and that's certainly worth a few extra words.

Person-first language may be a new concept to some of you, but it's actually not that new.

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