User:Stamma BSA 1/sandbox

Scroobius Pip on stage, 2010

'Find the right words' is a campaign created by VMLY&R for Stamma, the British Stammering Association. Launched in September 2020, the campaign highlights the problem caused by negative language used in relation to stammering, and challenges it to change perceptions towards people who stammer.

Every article on Wikipedia featuring famous or notable people who stammer or stammered was reviewed, and Stamma, together with the agency, set about editing them to correct out-of-date, misleading and false information which creates and reinforces negative perceptions.

It included out of home digital advertising and a social media campaign, and was encapsulated in a video narrated by one of the charity's patrons Scroobius Pip.

Video narration

"Imagine you’re 15 and you stammer. You love Ed Sheeran and Emily Blunt. Not that long ago you were amazed by Lewis Carroll’s stories. They all have something in common with you. And all deserve a place in history. But according to articles on the world's largest encyclopaedia, they’re “plagued” by a “terrible impediment” which made them “less impressive”, when all they did was stammer. A physical condition that few of us stop to think about, yet 1 in 100 people have. That's over 70 million people who deal with a stammer every day. Hearing it’s a “defect” doesn’t help.

So we went through every article that mentioned stammering and rewrote those that talk about it in a damaging, clichéd, thoughtless and false way. 183 of them. The way we talk about stammering affects people who stammer. It also shapes how the world sees them. There shouldn’t be shame in having a stammer, whether you’re 15 or 65. It’s just how people talk. Let’s find the right words to talk about stammering."