Casey Miller

Casey Geddes Miller (February 26, 1919 – January 5, 1997) was an American feminist author and editor best known for promoting the use of non-sexist writing in the English language. With Kate Swift, her business partner and platonic domestic partner, she wrote influential books and articles about sexism in the English language.

Biography

Casey Miller was born in Toledo, Ohio, on February 26, 1919, to Walter and Laura Miller. By 1930 her father had died and her mother and sisters moved from Perrysburg, Ohio, to New York City. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts Philosophy in 1940. She also studied graphic arts at Yale University. During the Second World War, Miller was commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Navy and served for three years in the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C.

After the war's conclusion, she moved to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia where she worked from 1947 to 1954 in the landmark's publication department. She became the curriculum editor of Seabury Press Inc. and 10 years later moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, to work as a freelance editor from her home. WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Writing career

Miller formed a professional editing partnership with Kate Swift, the director of the news bureau of the Yale University's School of Medicine, in 1970. Soon after, Miller and Swift were asked to copy-edit a sex education manual for junior high school students with the intended goal of encouraging mutual respect and equality between female and male students. However, the original text of the pamphlet continually used masculine personal pronouns such as "he" so that it was unclear whether the manual's original author was writing about both males and females or males alone. The use of masculine pronouns to refer to both male and females undermined the stated goal of establishing equality between the students. Swift later said, "We suddenly realized what was keeping [the author's] message - his good message - from getting across, and it hit us like a bombshell," in a 1994 interview for the National Council of Teachers of English. She went on to say, "It was the pronouns! They were overwhelmingly masculine-gendered." The next year, Miller and Swift published an article titled "Desexing the English Language" in the inaugural issue of the magazine Ms., which had been run as an insert in the New York Magazine on December 6, 1971. Swift would later remark that the public response to this article received both praise and ridicule.

Words and Women Miller and Swift's work culminated in their publishing of the book Words and Women in 1976 by Doubleday, which Women's Media Center called "a world-changing book."

The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing In 1980 Miller and Swift wrote The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing and had it published by Lippincott & Crowell and in 1988 by HarperCollins.