Use of "passes away"

Back in January, a local National Guard officer died a week after being seriously wounded in Afghanistan. The morning paper simply headlined their Page One story, "Berrettini Dies" ... and brother, did they catch some heat for being "insensitive."

 

Sounds like it's a no-win for us.

Use "passed away" and some people blast you for sounding like a funeral home press release. Others in and out of the media complain that you're sugar-coating it. Use "died" and some people say you're insensitive.

 

Every time someone dies, the people around him are forced to face their own mortality. Many -- I might say most here but I've not done any surveys on the subject -- are in denial about this, so "passes away" somehow softens the semantic blow. As if choice of words is going to chang the fact that the dead person is, in fact, dead.

 

I worked at a joint up in New York that, as the old story went, was the reason AP actually had a rule on the use of "passed away."

It seems that way back in the day of the old plating systems, a notable politician died and it was huge six column front page kind of news.

"CONGRESSMAN SMITH HAS PISSED AWAY"

Apparently when you would send down the pages for the guys to put the old metal letters on, sometimes the "i" would look like an "a" and vice versa. So the guys in the pressroom would just grab the letters quick and throw them on. Never paid much attention to which one actually got on there.

So AP jumped all over that and banned the use of passed away. Not sure how true that story actually was, but it was the stuff of legends up there.