To: MSNBC News
Fr: GruntDoc
Re: Military Nomenclature
Please note that members of the Armed Forces are identified commonly by service (i.e., Soldier=Army, Sailor=Navy, Marine=Marine, Airman=Air Force, etc.), and additionally by rank (not at issue here).
Therefore, when you describe members of the US Navy as “Soldiers” in the subtitle of your article on the recent grounding of a US submarine, you might appear to be out of touch with, well, centuries of service tradition.
There are indeed occasions wherein Soldiers might be passengers (“Combat Cargo”) aboard Navy ships, but this seems not to be the case.
I am glad the remainder of the article describes Navy men as Sailors, perhaps making this only a gigantic typo, and not a sign of cluelessness. Perhaps.
Update: fixed.
Headlines are written by editors, not the article’s writer, so it was the editor who was clueless.
Passengers=self-loading baggage, at least from the NAVAIR
POV.