A change in policy

What's in a name?

Plenty.

My old friend the late June Wetzler always made it clear that she preferred to be identified in print as Mrs. Pete Wetzler. That was true several years after Pete's death and continued to be true until June herself passed away.

In many ways, it's a generational thing.

Women born and raised in a certain era are more comfortable having their identity tied to their husband's. But that generation is on the wane, and today it's safe to say most women under 60 prefer to be identified by their own name rather than as "Mrs. Bob" or "Mrs. Joe."

All of this comes into play when trying to maintain consistent styles for the newspaper. Every newspaper establishes styles - rules - in order to be consistent and make things clearer for the reader.

Those styles evolve over time, and they should be a topic of ongoing debate in any healthy newsroom.

In our case, the debate has focused on the "Mrs. Bob" issue and the question of obituaries.

Our obituary policy is predicated on one essential point: That the obit is a news item.

That means our essential mission is to convey the news as succinctly, accurately, clearly, and consistently as possible.

Sounds simple enough, but it can get mighty complicated.

Take, for instance, the "Mrs. Bob" style issue.

Our policy is to identify surviving blood relatives of local residents, local natives, and former residents in their obituaries. We don't ordinarily identify surviving in-laws, unless they are the only local connection or only survivor.

But because of the "Mrs. Bob" style we inadvertently identify some in-laws and not others.

For instance, our long-standing style would say someone is survived by: "a brother, John Smith, Portland, and a sister, Mrs. Jim (Betty) Goldfinger, Dunkirk."

The intent has been to identify the brother and sister and satisfy the preferred name use of an older generation, but by doing so we have also identified Jim Goldfinger as a surviving brother-in-law, while John Smith's wife is ignored.

Clearly, there has to be a better way to do it.

That was underscored last year in an obituary where there were several surviving daughters, whose husbands were mentioned under the "Mrs. Bob" rule, and a single surviving son, whose wife was not mentioned.

One option would be to eliminate any mention of spouses of survivors, as in: "a brother, John Smith, Dunkirk, and a sister, Betty Goldfinger, Portland."

That would work if everyone had a unique name, but we don't. Sometimes we don't know which Betty Goldfinger is being mentioned until we know it's Jim's wife.

Another option, which some newspapers have adopted, would be to simply put the spouse's name in parentheses, as in: "a brother, John (Mitzi) Smith, and a sister Betty (Jim) Goldfinger."

But that just seems weird, and we suspect it's going to confuse genealogists for years to come. (Did he really go by the nickname Mitzi?)

So here's what we have settled on, effective this week: "a brother, John Smith (wife: Mitzi), Portland, and a sister Betty Goldfinger (husband: Jim), Dunkirk."

It's a little clumsy, but it's clear.

Will it satisfy everyone? Of course not.

I suspect June - pardon me - Mrs. Pete Wetzler wouldn't approve.

But it's an evolving style, and we do offer an alternative. Tribute ads allow the family to control the content of the obituary. They're paid for. They're not news. But for some families they are the right choice.[[In-content Ad]]