‘Obamacare\' – With or Without Quotation Marks

A Times reader, Tom Bird, of East Lansing, Mich., raised a timely issue, given all that's happening in Washington. He wrote that other news organizations, including The Associated Press, are putting the expression “Obamacare” in quotation marks, “signifying that it is not a neutral expression, but instead is political rhetoric that is being used in a partisan way.” And he added, “When will The Times wake up?”

A quick search of Times news stories turned up only one recent example of the phrase being used in the manner Mr. Bird mentioned. It came in a prototypically Times-like headline on the front of the Sunday business section: “On the Threshold of Obamacare, Warily.” (The word also appears regularly, without quotes, on the Economix blog where one recent headline read: “How to Gut Obamacare.”)

But, for the most part, the news pages are using what I view as the equivalent of quotation marks â€" a description of the phrase, which provides the same kind of distance as quotation marks would. Here's an example:

… federal officials declined to discuss whether they had found design flaws in their system, but their comments appeared to place most of the blame on the sheer volume of traffic. They pronounced themselves pleased, saying that the intense interest showed a pent-up demand that demonstrated the need for the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law known as Obamacare, which created the exchanges.

I asked Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, about the guidelines for the expression in the news pages. “For the most part, we have not used ‘Obamacare' as our standard term in news stories outside of quotations,” he said. “Aside from the question of whether it's politically charged, the term strikes me as informal â€" essentially a nickname â€" which is not our normal style for straight news articles. Most often we simply use a straightforward description, like ‘the health care law' or ‘the health care overhaul,' or occasionally the formal name, the Affordable Care Act.”

However, in the opinion pages of The Times, where different style guidelines often apply, many examples crop up of Obamacare without quotation marks or description. Columnists including Frank Bruni, Charles Blow and Paul Krugman have used the phrase â€" acceptably, I think â€" in the context of their overall viewpoints and individual voices.

A reader, Paul Teichert, in mentioning a Joe Nocera column in which the phrase was used, expressed his displeasure: “Why become part of the conservative media echo chamber?” he wrote. “I wish that in future The Times would adopt a policy of calling it solely the Affordable Care Act rather than sounding like those who have disdain for the act and our president.”

As for just how politically charged the phrase is, that can be debated. A look back to last year found a Times article about leading Democrats' change of heart in embracing the term. Even the president seemed to be picking it up.

Of course, that was then. Just last week, the ABC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel sent a camera crew out to the streets to query citizens about whether they preferred Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. They may mean one and the same thing, but people reacted negatively to the first and more positively to the second.

That's far from a scientific poll, of course, but it makes the point that â€" as The Times's readers point out â€" language choice matters.