|
War and war
|
Richard Stafford
|
Apr 17, 2006 14:23 PDT
|
John McIntyre wrote:
After a battle in the Middle Ages, heralds from the two sides would
confer to establish a number of things, among them what to name the
battle.
Since then, conventions of naming appear to be determined by usage over
time. Civil War buffs are accustomed to the idea that the two sides had
different names for the war itself and for individual battles: Bull
Run/Manassas. The Hundred Years War was obviously a name applied
retrospectively. World War I was commonly called the Great War until a
successor broke out.
My recollection -- I don't have any AP Stylebooks handy at home -- is
that AP for years lowercased "gulf war" and only in the last couple of
years changed the style to capitalize it. What determines this --
bureaucratic classifications by the VA, for example, or the consensus
among military historians -- appears to be fluid. It may be a matter of
simple prudence to wait until the war is over, and has been over for a
while, to decide what to call it formally.
John McIntyre
This makes a lot of sense to me. That traditions have a lot in common with
the old soldiers McArthur said never die, although they fade away — or at
least fade from view while continuing to exert influence — goes a long way
toward explaining the peculiarities of our capitalization preferences.
During the Vietnam war, I can attest to the fact that The Anaheim Bulletin and
The Independent, Press-Telegram in Long Beach were among the papers that
did not capitalize the word "war" when referring to what we now call the Vietnam War.
As I mentioned in my previous post: During the fighting in Korea,
papers were reluctant to call that conflict the Korean War, because
it was not officially declared to be a war by Congress. This was the
only official reason I ever heard for keeping "war" down. I think that war was
viewed politically as a police action by the United Nations, and most newspapers
supported that view.
The Vietnam war crept up on the American public incrementally after Dien Bien Phu,
and was viewed as belonging to the same category of conflict as that to which Korea
belonged. It, too, was other than a declared war, and so long as I worked on the desk,
first in Anaheim and then in Long Beach, we did not put the word "war" up when
talking about Vietnam. That policy did not change when AP and UPI, without
consulting with The New York Times, decided to change the name of the country from
Viet Nam to Vietnam, although that would have been an opportune moment.
I inferred from those experiences that when referring to current undeclared wars, we do
not capitalize the word "war." When such bloody events lie entirely in the past, then we
capitalize the word "war" in their names.
Apparently, there were exceptions to the rule that established the traditions making my
inference possible, if Doug Fisher's memory — supported by that of Susan Abe — is on
target. But I think John McIntyre remembers correctly. Of course, it would be a good
idea to look at the archives to confirm this, as Doug suggested. But, generally, did we
capitalize "war" when fighting was taking place Grenada or in Noriega's Panama?
These may seem like skirmishes rather than wars, but the scale of fighting does not seem
to be the determining factor.
Richard Stafford
Hemet, CA 92544
Doug Fisher wrote:
Richard:
An interesting and compelling view and, being from back a ways myself,
I think it would be fascinating to dive into the morgues and review how
we andled Vietnam -- when we turned to capping War (hmmm, wonder if it
was after Tet or before, or, indeed, not until after Paris).
(Korea was a special kind of case being a "police action" as you note.)
Of course, maybe we kind of then jumped the gun on Gulf War I, as it
was widely capped.
Chrs,
Doug
Susan E. Abe wrote:
I'd be inclined to agree -- but don't I remember that we said "Gulf
War" and "Persian Gulf War" contemporaneously?
>>>>
---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1¢/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
|
|
 |
|
