Friday, March 6, 2009
To-may-toe Toh-mah-toe, it matters.
I always get worried when I read anything related sex, STIs or rape cases in the Red and Black because it's usually shameless, uninformative, and gender-role affirming. The article in today's Red and Black about Spring Break and avoiding STDs was surprisingly informative and relevant.
Although I am all for keeping the reader interested and laughing, I think the number of puns should be limited or simply kept at the lede paragraph of the article. Comments like ," It's a touchy subject, literally", or "Just be careful who you invite into your bubble because there's a good chance you'll be sharing more than blissful ignorance" are all cute and funny, but I think we get it, it's an awkward subject for some people and you're using humor to disarm them.
The article definitely came at a useful time and was pretty engaging but my biggest problem with the article is that it misuses the term STDs when the correct term is STIs. Brown's University's Health Center web site explains the difference between terminologies of both STDs v. STIs.
In short, the site explains that the " term 'infection' more accurately describes conditions where sexual partners may not have symptoms and may not be aware that they have an infection, and because many of these infections are actually curable. The term 'infection' carries less of a social stigma than the term 'disease.' The term STI is also being used by leading sexual health organizations such as Planned Parenthood." The term "STI" more closely relates to the issues she addresses in her article and should have been used instead of "STD".
On The Red and Black's web site, someone leaves a comment pointing out that the writer had made the mistake in terminology but the writer responded by saying that she avoided using the term because she went to a seminar in which most of the girls were confused when the term "STI" was used instead of "STD" but as a writer, I think we shouldn't really cater to our reader in terms of using phrases and words that we know are politically incorrect.
As editors, if we know the direction of change in our language, we shouldn't really re-affirm the old terms if they are incorrect. If that was the case, we would still be using terms like "colored" or "retard."
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You raise a great point here. I didn't know that the scientific community was moving toward STI instead of STD. But the larger question, as you note, is whether journalists should speak the language of the common man or the language of science (or political correctness). It's a perplexing question: we want to be factual, but we also want for the greatest number of people to understand what we write. Good thoughts here.
ReplyDeleteLike Ms. Roessner, I was unaware that the more accurate term now is STI. I liked how you posted the difference between STD'S and STI'S because STI could potentially give a reader the impression that it was a specific type of infection, with the initials STI, rather than being the more appropriate term for most sexual transmitted "infections".
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