WSJ dropping company suffixes

Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker sent out the following on Monday:

Dear all,

We will no longer routinely use corporate designations – that alphabet soup of Inc., Co., Corp., PLC, Ltd. and the like – for companies in The Wall Street Journal. We have decided that their value is outweighed by the clutter that they often create, especially near the top of important news articles. Our March 16 article about the rescue of First Republic Bank included five corporate designations in just one paragraph.

We already dropped most designations, many years ago, for markets-related copy when referring to stocks, and for many feature stories. A few companies don’t use a designation at all, such as Johnson & Johnson and Morgan Stanley. This change will bring uniformity across the newsroom. Our sister publication, Barron’s, doesn’t use corporate designations (with some exceptions as indicated below).

Reporters and editors still need to know the corporate designations–and should use them or alternate wording when necessary for clarity or context.

Some specifics:

• Keep designations for companies that would otherwise be confused with similar names, such as U.S.-based Merck & Co. versus Germany’s Merck KGaA, or use another solution to distinguish them, such as the U.S.-based drug company Merck. The same goes for distinguishing a parent company from its subsidiary, such as Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. versus Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
• Keep designations for companies where the designation is integral, such as our parent company News Corp (and don’t forget there is no period in that name) and X Corp. (previously known as Twitter Inc.). Other companies that work best with a designation on first reference, as is the practice at Barron’s: HP Inc., Southern Co., Patterson Cos. and TJX Cos.
• Unfamiliar company names might read better with the designation on first reference, particularly if the designation is & Co.
• Be on alert when we refer to companies named after people, such as Walt Disney or Charles Schwab, so that it is clear we are referring to an entity and not the person.

This change goes into effect today. Send questions to Bill Power or the Standards team at wsjfinalread@wsj.com or to the #wsj-style-substance channel in Slack.

Emma