You have probably heard what we have heard. We have seen lists of words leaked from certain federal organizations disallowing the use of certain words in certain documents, within certain organizations, and in certain circumstances or banned words. We are grant writers, and we have read that using these words in certain grant applications will not allow us to support the people we serve. 

 

It is unclear how this list of words will impact other federal agencies and departments, so out of an abundance of caution, in agreement with client organizations still eligible to pursue open federal applications, we decided we needed a plan to completely avoid using these words in ANY application documents—narratives, budget justifications, and all attachments.

 

As a team, we have greatly grieved the erosion of free speech and humaneness. We have been dismayed (to say the least) at the incredibly disturbing implications of the glaring and requisite absence of those “banned” words. 

 

Nonetheless, we will continue to fight to help create incredible change in our communities while using our words.

 

Our team is working hard to support client proposals and the social benefits they bring to their communities without being flagged or mischaracterized because of the banned words. We wanted to share one possible solution with you, as it has worked well for our team, hoping it might empower you to do your best grants work without feeling overwhelmed or alone in trying to navigate word choice.

 

These next steps can help you with all your (Google) grant documents (also see the note about budget spreadsheets a little later).

 

1. In a Google Doc, create a simple list of banned words.

2. Google allows you to search for more than one word at a time. Because multiple banned words share certain strings of letters, we can double that efficiency by simultaneously finding all the search strings. For instance, this is a search string and the banned words it helps us find:

disab 

disabilities

disability 

disabled

 

To create search strings like the above, review the raw list, group words with shared letters, and add search strings..

 

3. Using the Styles dropdown menu, format the search strings as Heading 1s (such as “disab” and “promot” below), under which the Heading 2s are the full words and phrases. 

disab [format as Heading 1]

disabilities [format as Heading 2]

disability [Heading 2]

disabled [Heading 2]
promot [Heading 1]

promote [Heading 2]

promote diversity [Heading 2]

promoting diversity [Heading 2]

 

4. Create a table of contents (TOC) from the headings.
Place the cursor at the top of your document, click Insert–>Table of contents, and select the style with links (you can read the style names by hovering over each one).

 

5. To see only the Heading 1 level, which contains your search strings:

1. 1. Find the floating menu at the top of the TOC, click the three vertical dots, and choose More options. 
   2. In the Table of Contents menu that opens, choose Heading Levels.
   3. Make sure that only the Heading 1 checkbox is checked. The TOC collapses down to just your search strings. In the example from Step 3, the TOC now shows:

disab
promot

 

6. Manually format the TOC for a multi-word search. Google’s Find syntax for searching for multiple words at one time looks like this:

(search|for|multiple|banned|words) or (autis|disab|equit|promot)

The entire group of search words needs to be enclosed by parentheses, and the words need a vertical bar between them — |

 

7. To reduce the chance of finding non-banned words:

1. 1. Manually add a space in front of certain words in the blue TOC, including: hate, latin, mental, male, native, nci, risk, trib, wom
   2. Manually add a space after “trans” and “EJ”
   3. Manually add a space before and after “carbon”:
      
      ( hate| nci| native|trans | carbon |EJ )
      

8. Copy and paste the blue block of linked text in its entirety into the Find field in the “Find and replace” dialog box:

1. 1. 1. To open Google’s “Find and replace” dialog box, press Ctrl+F, and in the dialog box that appears, click the three horizontal dots.
      2. Check the box next to “Use regular expressions….”
      3. Copy and paste the linked words, formatted as described in Steps 6 and 7, into the Find field.
      4. To move through the search strings that are identified, click Next. 

For Google Sheets, the steps are nearly the same, except that:

• In Step 8-2 above, check the box next to “Search using regular expressions.”
• We recommend omitting Steps 7-1 and 7-3, because if a banned word is at the beginning of a cell, it will not have a space in front of it (as opposed to a narrative in docs) and will not be found.
• The Find process will stop at a cell containing a banned word but will not identify which word has been found. You must return to your TOC and review the words in that cell against the search strings.

 

Why didn’t we just make a big, plain list of all the words? 

We thought about it and ultimately opted for the process we have shared, for these two reasons:

 

Thoroughness and caution. The search strings add an extra layer of protection. They help us find words that aren’t technically on the list, but are very similar to the banned words (e.g., “community” is on the list but “communities” is not). We might avoid those extra words, too, so that we can prevent being flagged. This way, we don’t have to anticipate and add every possible variant we can imagine to a massive list.

 

Future additions. This approach allows for the reasonable possibility that additional, similar words will be banned over time. If a newly banned word can be found using an established search string, we can add it as a Header 2 (for completeness), but do not need to update our overall TOC list of search strings (which has to be manually formatted to suit the Find function each time we refresh it).

If you want to work from one big, plain list, you can easily adapt Steps 6 through 8.

 

Why didn’t we make a shorter list with only the search strings?

Including all the individual banned words allows us to review the comprehensive list for accuracy.

 

A work in progress

We hope this helps you. We are in this together. We will continue to monitor for newer banned words and ask the community to share any findings. Keep fighting for good using your words!