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Comment by benatkin | Hacker News Reader

I think the article should say "died by suicide" instead of "took his own life".

Those are equivalent. What is the difference from your perspective?

Even if logically two statements are the same, the implication or tone can be important. There are media reporting guidelines on suicide e.g. the Samaritans in the UK provide one, as do the WHO and CDC.

https://media.samaritans.org/documents/Media_Guidelines_FINA...

https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/resourc...

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031539.htm

Though the Samaritans one lists "took their own life" as actually being okay and warns against phrases like "committed suicide".

I think "took their own life" makes it sound more deliberate. I think it varies how deliberate it is. "Died by suicide" doesn't add anything to the word suicide except for pointing out that the person died. This lets people more easily update their understanding of suicide.

I'd prefer "died by their own hand" to "took their own life" but some might get hung up on the word hand. "Died by suicide" is my preferred phrase, though.

I think that's quite fair, thanks for the response.

I personally don't read into any of the nuances of the different phrases, so for me they are directly equivalent. I suppose if I were a writer, I might pay more attention to the phrasing.

I guess as defined in my own vocabulary, suicide is always deliberate, or else it would be an accidental death caused by the victim.

All of these phrasings have the exact same connotation for me, too. None paint any different picture or make me feel any differently. Seems people have a need for there to be preferred language for anything sensitive.

Interesting how everyone in this sub-thread has a different preferred term.

I think I prefer "killed himself/herself". I think this doesn't whitewash what it really is. "Took their own life" can theoretically sound kind of romantic and poetic to some people. "[X] killed himself" makes it clear what the implications of the actions and effects are, without adding any sort of moral or legal judgment (e.g. "committing" implying committing a crime).

It's jarring - which a professional news outlet may not want to come across as - but I think it should be.

The idea of "died by suicide" is that it presents it as more like succumbing to a disease, not blaming the deceased. It puts the focus on loss of life, not the taking of life.

Not quite analogous, but if someone has epileptic seizure and falls and cracks their skull and dies, we don't says they threw themselves to the ground, even though their own brain caused them to go off balance and fall.

I think "died by suicide" is a good phrasing; I'd prefer that to "took their own life" or "committed suicide".

But, yeah, as you say, that's not a good analogy. Barring a scenario like extreme drug influence or a total psychotic fugue, suicide is still generally an intentional or mostly intentional act, even if it may be an impulsive one. If you shoot and kill someone in a crime of passion, you're absolved of some blame, but not all of it. It may be the potentially deeply regrettable intentions of someone who's in a very bad state of mind, but unfortunately a lot of decisions a lot of people make fall into that category.

For me, the important bit is the clear, grave consequence ("killed"). My goal isn't to suggest blame should be put on anyone. I don't think such a term would work in English, but if there were something like "were killed by themselves" or "auto-killed", I would've said that, instead.

My intention was to just prevent sugarcoating it and hopefully slightly reduce the chance that a suicidal person might read it in an abstract or idyllic way. "Died", "passed away", "life taken", "perished", "succumbed", "departed", "deceased", and even "suicide" just don't have the same gravitas as "killed". I know that's partly because "killed" implies intentionality, but I think it's also because it also encompasses the visceral act of it truly happening. And the word itself has a visual and verbal harshness to it. It's not just that they were here and now they weren't; they were killed.

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