Does the Sierra Club's Language Guide Matter?

George Packer: Does it matter what the Sierra Club's language guide says? Or how widespread is that? That's a good question. I think that these guides which themselves are inspired by just a couple of handbooks that have been published by activist organizations end up influencing common writing and common speech. They influence what people mainly in, let's be honest, educated professional circles feel that it's okay to say. So eventually it does spread to the larger society and people suddenly become aware, oh yesterday you could say marginalized. In fact marginalized is a bit of a mushy word. Today according to one of these guides marginalized is actually not a good word and you should be careful about how you