The latest AP Stylebook update says use of “illegitimate” in reference to offspring of unmarried mothers should be discouraged, notes Grumpy Editor.
The style guide for journalists suggests substituting "illegitimate child" with phrases such as “the child, whose mother was not married” or “whose parents were not married.”
It’s also a case of using five or seven words to replace two.
The description “doesn’t come up very often in our news copy, but it’s a term that’s stigmatizing, and unfairly so,” relates David Minthorn, AP’s deputy standards editor.
The term is okay to use as part of a quote, he adds, but “our guidance would be to use something more sensitive.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the percentage of births to unmarried mothers declined slightly to 40.8 percent in 2010 from 41 percent in 2009.
Of course, the description can be whittled down to one word that used to be common in the U.S. and Britain --- and is incorporated in the script of the current “Downton Abbey” series on Masterpiece Theater on PBS (Sunday night).
That word: bastard.
And, yes, some workers still refer to their nasty bosses by that noun.
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