The Wall Street Journal has gone the way of podcasts, cable news, broadcast news and publications such as the New Yorker, the Guardian and this very newspaper. Starting Wednesday, the Journal ceased using courtesy titles, such as Mr., Ms. and Mx.
“The Journal has been one of the few news organizations to continue to use the titles, under our long-held belief that Mr., Ms. and so forth help us to maintain a polite tone,” wrote Tucker. “However, the trend among almost all newspapers and magazines has been to go without, as editors have concluded that the titles in news articles are becoming a vestige of a more-formal past, and that the flood of Mr., Ms., Mx. or Mrs. in sentences can slow down readers’ enjoyment of our writing.”
“In addition, dropping courtesy titles is more in line with the way people communicate their identities. It puts everyone on a more-equal footing,” Tucker continued.
The Journal’s magazine, podcasts and videos were already forgoing courtesy titles before Tucker’s announcement, as was its sports department (“To avoid stilted phrases such as, ‘Mr. Curry made seven 3-pointers,’” Tucker wrote). The announcement follows the Journal’s decision to drop the use of corporate designations (such as “Inc.” and “Corp.”), which was also done with the goal of keeping its writing “more streamlined, approachable and lively,” she explained in the memo.
This may seem like a minor change to most readers — or perhaps a long-overdue one — but the use of courtesy titles has divided newsrooms and journalism schools for decades.
Honorifics — which also include reverend (Rev.), governor (Gov.) and sergeant (Sgt.) — were originally a nod to formality, signaling a certain level of respect for those notable enough to make news. Such hierarchical and political titles are still used on first reference in this and other papers, and, along with courtesy titles, on second reference in obituaries and editorials.
Most news outlets long ago abandoned courtesy titles in regular news stories, many of them taking their lead from the stylistically influential Associated Press’s decision to strike them in 2000. The Journal’s decision to follow suit leaves the New York Times as the most notable holdout remaining, though even the Times doesn’t apply courtesy titles in all areas of its coverage.
“It’s a way to give a publication an identity and a voice,” said Aileen Gallagher, a journalism professor at Syracuse University. For the past 20 years, courtesy titles were a signal you were reading the Journal or the Times, Gallagher said. They were essential to how these publications saw themselves — “above the fray and leading civil discourse.”
Or as the Times put it in its online style guide — essentially a linguistic bible for its reporters — the paper’s style should call to mind “the unpretentious language of a letter to an urbane and literate friend.”
Merrill Perlman, a former Times copy editor, remembers working on the 1999 version of the Times Stylebook, where a (short) discussion arose about whether to continue using courtesy titles. “The answer was yes because it’s a sign of civility,” she said.
“Newspapers such as the Times are similar to dictionaries. They don’t lead. They follow,” added Perlman, who once supervised all the Times’s copy editors. “You don’t make up words. You don’t make up language constructs. They follow them once they have moved far enough into the mainstream.”
But that raises a question: At what point does a paper fall too far behind a shifting culture?
Newspapers have been reckoning for decades with the online culture revolution: trying to keep their core identities while speaking to younger readers who might bristle at the focus a simple “Ms.” puts on a person’s gender, relationship status and even class.
While courtesy titles may appeal to the urbane among us, their usage can also get very complicated, very fast.
Would you be able to read an article about Megan Thee Stallion with a straight face if it called her Ms. Thee Stallion?
On the other hand, if the story called her Ms. Pete (her actual last name), would you be able to follow?
What about Ms. (Lady) Gaga? Legend has it that the Times once referred to the rock singer Meat Loaf as “Mr. Loaf.” The paper did not, but it was a myth so sticky that the Times had to correct the record.)
The primary reason to drop these titles has to do with accessibility, said Brian Cleveland, a deputy editor who oversees The Washington Post’s style guide. “We want to be accessible to our readers and for The Post to feel relatable. Most people don’t use honorifics in their regular life except in particularly formal circumstances, so it creates a barrier between us and our readers, and possibly between our readers and their ability to connect with our subjects.”
Then there’s the matter of which courtesy titles apply. Should you use “Dr.” for PhDs as well as MDs? Should a minor get a Mr. or Ms.? Does an odious individual deserve courtesy at all? “Start with the very idea of ‘Mr. Hitler’ and work backward from there” is how former Post editor Bill Walsh put the conundrum in 2016.
Flip through any old newspaper style guide on courtesy titles (hey, some of us are into that kind of thing) and you’ll find many rules, exceptions and conflicts.
“For a time, it seemed to me, a sort of anarchy reigned, with reporters deciding on their own whether a police officer should be referred to on second reference as Chief, or Lieutenant or Sergeant,” said Martin Weil, a Metro reporter who has worked for The Post since the 1960s.
Far from static emblems of civility, courtesy titles have evolved with society’s changing prejudices and norms. They’ve been particularly fraught for women.
Old newspapers would often refer to women by their husband’s names (for example, “Mrs. John Smith”). Reporters eventually progressed to using women’s actual names but still insisted on classifying them by relationship status: “Mrs.” for the married, and “Miss” for unwed. This practice was so pervasive at one point that Amelia Earhart felt it necessary to write New York Times Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, asking that she no longer be referred to as “Mrs. Putnam” in the paper.
Kathy Kiely, a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and a longtime journalist, remembers the “utter mortification” of reporting in the 1970s — interviewing a woman who may have lost her children in a house fire, or who just made some big scientific discovery, and asking: “Are you married?”
“I usually tended to ask it toward the end in case it made a woman so angry at me that I wouldn’t be able to finish the interview,” she said. This awkwardness never came up in interviews with male subjects. Most of them were just “Mr.” — love life be darned.
Newspapers made another small step toward modernity in the 1970s and ’80s, when they gradually introduced a universal “Ms.” that let reporters sidestep the marriage question. Even this was considered too avant-garde by some.
“You would not believe the protests, the outrage: ‘We can’t do it. It’s too hard to say,’” recalled Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. (In fact, the Times didn’t embrace “Ms.” until 1986.)
No amount of tweaking could solve the fundamental problem of courtesy titles, several journalists said. They always draw attention to an arbitrary aspect of a person’s identity — such as whether they’re nonbinary, in the case of Mx. They also assume the subject would refer to themselves that way.
“Those titles put people in boxes,” said Gallagher. “That may not be how they think about themselves, or how they expect other people to call them or refer to them. It’s a little bit disingenuous to sources, and especially when those sources are everyday people.”
Most publications ultimately decided the easiest solution to the problem was to eliminate courtesy titles, with the Journal belatedly joining them this week. Now, the Gray Lady is nearly the last Ms. standing.
Perlman, the former Times editor, is now a freelance editor. She works on everything from white papers to comedic nonfiction pieces.
Her personal view on courtesy titles?
“I’m agnostic.”
Amy Argetsinger and Beth Hughes contributed to this report.