Use of ‘Esquire’ Is Lawyer Puffery

In calling a full-page advertisement offensive, I do not mean that The Times ought not to have published it, nor do I actually disagree with its message.

What I find offensive is the assumption onto themselves of a term of respect by three attorneys among the board of directors of Community Memorial Hospital. I quote from Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language as to the word “esquire”: “an unofficial title of respect, having no precise significance, sometimes placed, especially in its abbreviated form, after a man’s surname in written address.”

I claim that it is a perversion of the English language for lawyers to puff themselves up by assigning to themselves a term of respect. If somebody else wishes to ladle out respect in writing to them, fair enough. But a lawyer is not an esquire per se, and cannot be, and I am always deeply offended when I come across this puffery.

Let them place after their names their earned degrees, as I do. I have just as much right--zero--to term myself esquire as do they, and I would never think of overlooking that zero.

GILBERT S. BAHN, PhD

Moorpark