S is for Spin

Linguists and editors are up in arms about recent stylistic mandates from the U.S. Army. It has come up on the Language Log ("Military capitalization," June 4) as well as in the print publication The Editorial Eye ("The Army Sets 'Down Style' Back a Few Decades," June 2007, 6).

I was hoping to find out that this is all a hoax, but evidence so far indicates otherwise.

Bill Poser's Language Log posting reports that the Army Chief of Staff has decreed "that 'command information products' capitalize the word soldier in all contexts, as if it were a proper noun. He has, furthermore, requested that the Associated Press stylebook and Webster's dictionary adopt his proposal." Poser is spot on with his assertion that this opens up a nightmarish can of worms. (Read the full posting.)

While I can't link to the Editorial Eye article here, it was a response to Al Kamen's April 24 column in the Washington Post (scroll down to the second piece, "Army Puts an Emphasis on Families"). EE's response:

While we completely support the idea of showing gratitude to the families of the brave men and women serving in the Army, this mandate is not only counter to the current practice of minimizing unnecessary capitalization [down style] – it could backfire. Because the converse of respect is disrespect. And when referring to families unrelated to the Army, this style being floated would require American Families but Iraqi families.

That’s one of the objectives of down style: evenhandedness in referring to people who work together but have different identifiers, such as job titles, departments, and so forth. Across different cultures, showing evenhandedness matters perhaps more but not less.

And I'm not even going down the path of discussing how U.S. leaders might better serve our soldiers and their families than by tossing token, stylistic consolations their way. As the EE piece puts it: "It’s a misguided way of showing respect that we’re guessing doesn’t make sense to Families saddened by yet another Extended Tour – much less comfort them." The two responses I found written by Family (here and here) seem to bear this out.