[so incredibly in progress; this is just a first draft; input welcome]

[TW for dehumanization, ableism, rape, cissexism, essentialism]:

don’t use “retarded,” “lame,” “spaz,” “schizo,” “weak,” “OCD” or “phobic” or “bipolar” non-seriously, any serious disability or mental illness or suchlike as a joke really

don’t use “crazy,” “hysterical,” “insane,” “lunatic” (consider if you mean ridiculous, over-the-top, excessive) (and watch for associations with violence, irrationality, disrespect of boundaries - these are extremely harmful associations with mental illness and actively hurt people, please stop perpetuating them)

don’t use “derp” or “herp derp,” “idiot,” “moron,” “cretin,” ”stupid or IQ/intelligence-based insults (consider if you mean thoughtless, reckless, irresponsible, rude, willfully uninformed or ignorant, something else with nuance)

don’t use “illegal” (or “alien”) to refer to people

don’t use “rape” casually, or “butt-hurt” (related)

don’t use “biological” and consider your use of “assigned” and all the assumptions in both, and the way they erase bodies in various states of non-/transition and can be used to override identity (consider “people who menstruate,” “people with penises” [while noting who calls what a ‘penis’ will vary], “people socialized ____” - what are you trying to say?)

don’t use binary conjunctions in general! you’re guaranteed to be leaving someone out. “ladies and gentlemen,” “boys and girls,” “men and women,” “trans and cis,” “asexual and allosexual,” “romantic and aromantic,” …

watch out for nouns instead of adjectives (“the disabled” vs “people with disabilities,” “colored” vs “people of color,” “the gays” vs “gay people,” “transsexuals” vs “transexual people,” “non-binaries” vs “non-binary folks,” “sexuals” vs “allosexual people”)

Note also that each of these is less about “this particular word is hurtful” than “the ideology behind the use of this word is oppressive,” so simply finding a substitute that conveys the same meaning is, uh, just as bad