WSJ defends use of Mr/Ms in sports coverage

Always seemed incredibly stuffy and pretentious to me, but it's their style. Frank Deford made the case on NPR that they should drop the titles, this is WSJ's response.

http://online.wSportsJournalists.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242390651358172.html

 

Good god, what smarm. Not even the NYT uses courtesy titles in sports.

 

For the Sports pages, it just looks goofy.

Does the WSJ use the honorifics for people who go by one name?

Ms. Madonna played to a packed house at the stadium Friday night.

Mr. Pele scored four goals for the Cosmos.

 

It's smarm, but one of my former publications used it. Mr., Miss and Mrs. and Coach in sports. A little much ...

 

I meant the condescending WSJ response.

 

In reference to that crap, calling is "smarm" was being kind, Dools. Epic arrogance comes to mind.

 

The kind of arrogance, say, that might motivate someone to take to the airwaves of NPR to offer unsolicited advice to a newspaper on the changes you'd like to see made to that newspaper's style guide?

 

I have no idea what words Deford used to make his case, but I doubt they were as snotty as the words quoted from the WSJ period. That this is still an issue in 2010, when you would have thought courtesy titles would have gone out with referring to females 18 or older as girls, is shocking. Anyhoo, so I guess we shouldn't have editorial pages, because that would be giving unsolicited advice to people.

 

The DMN dropped courtesy titles a couple of years ago (finally!) and never used them in sports, but I believe first-name people like Madonna and Pele didn't get them.

 

Dools, I'm of the opinion that if a newspaper wasted its valuable editorial-page real estate on whether or not another media outlet should or shouldn't use certain words, that'd be a pretty huge waste of time.

I'm also of the opinion that Frank Deford comes off all too often as a pompous ass.

And with that said, courtesy titles are still dumb.

 

From now on, they will be simply referred to as Mister:

 

Even when I see the obligatory Mr. and Mrs. in obituaries, it's a little jarring to me. The last-name-second-reference thing works for every living person on earth, but they die and you feel a need to ramp up a new level of respect? We'll dog you as overpaid on a daily basis, but when you die, we're immediately reverent.