The 7 parts of speech

Adjectives surrender. Writing just became blander.

Like every other governmental agency concerned with testing, the New York State Education Department devised its own list of taboo words. There are the usual ones that have offended feminists for a generation, like “fireman,” “authoress,” “handyman” and “hostess.” New York exercised its leadership by discovering bias in such words as “addict” (replace with “individual with a drug addiction”); “alumna, alumnae, alumni, alumnus” (replace with “graduate or graduates”); “American” (replace with “citizen of the United States or North America”); “cancer patient” (replace with “a patient with cancer”); “city fathers” (replace with “city leaders”).

And the conclusion is dead on:

Thus the great irony of bias and sensitivity reviewing. It began with the hope of encouraging diversity, ensuring that our educational materials would include people of different experiences and social backgrounds. It has evolved into a bureaucratic system that removes all evidence of diversity and reduces everyone to interchangeable beings whose differences we must not learn about–making nonsense of literature and history along the way.

via National Review