A vs. The: Who Wins? (A Smith Weds The Struth)

The author Tara Bray Smith and her bookcover.

Didja hear that Thomas Struth got married this weekend? He did. I know this is true because I read it in the New York Times. He married the woman above, Tara Bray Smith. Tara’s a writer, she wrote a memoir called West of Then. I read this book and it’s good. I think I cried more than once, and I remember parts of it clearly which is a very good sign because I have a mind like a sieve. (I’m a great person to rent a movie with, anything viewed more than 6 months ago is basically new to me.) Anyhow. They got hitched. I saw the announcement and then got brought up short at the very first line:

Tara Bray Smith, a writer, and Thomas Struth, the photographer, were married yesterday by the Rev. Vernon Nichols, a Unitarian Universalist minister, at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York.

I know Thomas is considerably more famous than Tara, sure. But I’m not quite sure that warrants her being “a author” while Struth gets to be “the photographer”. Is there a style guide for this? A check list? Sure, Struth is famous (and in case you haven’t heard his photographs are quite large) and he had a big retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of our more venerated institutions. But Tara wrote a book! And it was published by Simon & Schuster. And it was good (several reputable publications seem to agree with me on that.) It’s not like she self-published a poetry chapbook and is writing an advice column on some blog. And let’s face it she’s better than book hot, she’s a stone cold fox. Would she have fared better in the “a vs. the” war had she married some recently minted Yale photo MFA? In that case I bet she’d so totally be “the writer” marrying “a photographer”.

So what qualifies you to be “the” instead of “a”? If I happened to marry “the photographer” and was relegated to being merely “a gallery” owner, I’d be pissed. Then again: do they write these announcements themselves and then submit them? Maybe she herself is complicit in the “a vs. the” decision? (That would scandalize me, for real.) There is so much I don’t know about the intricacies of the NYT wedding announcements!

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You’re currently reading “A vs. The: Who Wins? (A Smith Weds The Struth),” an entry on Personism

Published:: 04.08.07 / 11pm

Category:: Ideas, Random, Words

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Danielle Scruggs Says:
April 9th, 2007 at 1:50 am

I was trying to remember if the AP Style Guide ever covered something like this but my mind’s coming up blank. I think maybe the writer was more familiar with Struth and figures Struth’s done more in his career. So that’s why he’s the photographer and she’s a writer. I’m just hazarding a guess. Personally, I would just use the same article. Either they’re both the’s or the both a’s.

I love your blog, by the way. This is my first time commenting but I’ve been reading it for a while and you always come up with really interesting posts.

john Says:
April 9th, 2007 at 10:04 am

If you follow the ultimate quantifier of mass appeal, the Amazon.com Sales Rank, then “the” writer, Tara Bray Smith, is far more popular than the photographer, Thomas Struth. (#87,104 for the paperback version of “West of Then” versus #580,901 for “Thomas Struth: 1977-2002.”)

Todd W. Says:
April 9th, 2007 at 11:36 am

I saw that yesterday and was so struck by the “a” vs “the” that I had to read the whole thing out loud to my wife. I would suppose the unsaid part of the sentence is “a writer you’ve mnever heard of” marries “the photographer that many of you have”. Struth is not so famous as to have household name recognition, but I doubt had Smith married a newly minted Yale MFA that she would have gotten the “the”.

The real scandal here is the photograph that accompanied the announcement. It’s Thomas Struth for goodness sake - that was the best he could come up with?! It almost looks like a self-portrait-by-cameraphone.

I’m often surprised at the casual quality of photographs some of these couples submit for the Times. Sometimes you wonder if the couple sent in a photo from the drunken cruise they first met on.

Jen Bekman Says:
April 9th, 2007 at 11:51 am

Yea, I mean in most circles Struth is far better know that Bray Smith is, but geez, the way that sentence is constructed is downright insulting. I’m with Danielle - why couldn’t they just use the same article? Or say “… Bray Smith, author of the memoir West of Then, married the photographer Thomas Struth…

There had to be a more elegant solution, or at least one that didn’t imply in such a glaring way that a nobody was marrying a somebody.

I’m sure little thought went into it, but I’m glad to hear that the distinction jumped out at other people too. It was jarring.