I saw this headline when I opened the newspaper this morning:
Dad, 19,
charged
in death
of baby
I object.
A “dad” is a patient, loving, caring, protective person who would never let anything bad happen to his children. The person the story is about is a male parent who shook his son to death to stop his crying.
By dropping the age, the headline writer could have written
Father
charged
in death
of baby
or
Parent
charged
in death
of baby
Some words do more than name things. They can evoke feelings about the thing named at the same time.
Take as an example this set of words:
house, home, hut, mansion, hovel, palace, shack
Each word in this list names a building in which people can live, but only house is fairly neutral. The others have emotional auras that conjure up a specific kind of house in our minds.
Words like mom, dad, and kid have connotations that make them appropriate in some contexts, but inappropriate in others. Headline shorthand is no excuse to misuse words.
connotation: the conveying or suggesting a meaning by a word along with or apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes
Amen!