Why does The Irish Times insist on saying the first World War, that first being lower case? Why do we refer to Muammar Gadafy, not Qaddafi, or the Belfast (not Good Friday) Agreement? Why do we write Dart, Cab and Nato but also RTÉ, EU and BBC?
There is a long answer to each of these questions, but the short answer is: because The Irish Times Stylebook says we must.
At any point in the day, hundreds of stories are moving through our publishing systems, covering a wide range of topics, each one written on deadline by a different author. Our stylebook – an in-house bible that codifies our style, spelling and grammar conventions – is what we use to ensure clarity and consistency, especially where there is no one correct way of expressing something. Some entries are long and detailed. Others, such as the rules on exclamation marks (“Don’t use”) or going forward (“Please don’t”) are to the point. A few, as our readers enjoy telling us, are decidedly eccentric.
The stylebook is regularly updated to take account of the news agenda; a style note was circulated this week telling us how to abbreviate US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice, not ICE). Settling on language for other changes can take months of work led by our Editing & Publishing team – the eagle-eyed copy-editors who correct our mistakes and finesse our prose. It’s a living document, reflecting changes in how people communicate.
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From today, a series of changes to the stylebook will take effect. The most significant is the elimination of honorifics in our news sections. The Irish Times stopped using Mr, Ms, Mrs and other courtesy titles in most sections, including arts, features, obituaries and sport, decades ago. We would never say “Mr Kelleher launched the ball towards Mr Scales, who headed it down for Mr Parrott to score.”
Honorifics never appear in opinion columns or editorials. Only in rare instances do journalists, authors, entertainers or sportspeople take theirs. The more exceptions we made, the more confusing it became for our readers.
From now on, honorifics will appear only in quoted speech, sketches or titles of books, plays, films and songs. Mrs Dalloway and Fantastic Mr Fox will still get through the editing process.
The new guidance, which runs to 1,500 words, suggests workarounds for cases where multiple people have the same surname; where professional titles are relevant to the story; or where the subject matter is particularly sensitive.
The change has been debated on and off for years. Honorifics were used as a marker of civility, or to show respect for people notable enough to make news. Today, we concluded, they sound like a vestige of a more formal past and no longer reflect how people speak or write. Their repetition – Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof, Sgt and so on – interrupts the flow of a story. Most news publishers go without.
From today, so will we. Just don’t mention the (first World) War.
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