NYT: No honorific for Bin Laden

by Jim Romenesko Published May 2, 2011 7:38 am Updated May 2, 2011 9:12 am

Times staffers received this memo early Monday morning:

From: Jolly, Tom
Date: May 2, 2011 4:15:37 AM EDT
To:
Subject: Two style decisions

At Jill and Bill’s request, we dropped the honorific for Bin Laden.

Without a “Mr.” in front of his name, it was decided that we should capitalize the “B” in Bin Laden on second references.

Thanks.

–
Tom Jolly
Associate Managing Editor / Night News
The New York Times
212-556-7197

http://twitter.com/tomjolly

http://facebook.com/Jolly.nytimes

http://nytimes.com

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Lefty Leftist

MFer would be appropriate.
http://twitter.com/TriadX1 TriadX1

Generally Mr. is used out of respect for a person. In the case of Osama, a “Mr” would be very inappropriate.
Kenneth Trueman

Some people transcend their names. Not sure we ever saw references to Mr. Stalin or Mr. Hitler or Mr. (Saddam) Hussein … at least in the last 30 years. Even The Economist, which is a stickler for this stuff, does not always add the requisite Mr/Mrs for despots/killers/etc. However, the presence of Mr / Mrs does tend to make the discussion a little less passionate/ more rational.