User talk:Beholderstories

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! -- 🐦DrWho42 ( 🔨 ) 23:52, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:EUPHEMISM
Please see the linked page above. "Committed suicide" is preferable to "took their own life" or "died by suicide". We do not use euphemisms to 'soften' language. This encyclopedia is not censored. ‡ El cid, el campeador talk  12:59, 3 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Your use of "preferable" seems to be lacking some important qualification. The word "commit" in the context of suicide certainly has an (historic) agenda; people using it because they are familiar with the idiomatic use of the term almost never do. So I assume good faith whenever I encounter its usage. However, "die by suicide" is emphatically not a euphemism. It is clear language using the most appropriate verb (to die); a verb which is specifically indicated as non-euphemistic in Wikipedia's guidance. Nonetheless, "committed suicide" remains a very common usage. That's a reasonable defence, albeit one that, to me, in the face of why people who work in the field of suicide discourage it, seems reactionary, and continues to be discussed on Wikipedia (Meanwhile, major news organisations — e.g., AP, ISPO — qualify their preference for discouraging use of "commit" in their style guides). Suicide is a sensitive topic and the way it is represented in the language of digital media is not neutral; this is worthy of consideration. Thank you El Cid for coming to my talk page to deploy the word "censored" and school me on what "we" do and do not do: Wikipedia is precisely what it is because of the work of people like you. Beholderstories (talk) 12:33, 18 June 2021 (UTC)