The cats no longer even look up at the low growl from the living room in the morning. It’s just The One With the Big Feet snarling at his newspaper.

This morning, not even through the first cup of coffee, I came across a reference to two men being tried in the deaths of three children as "the accused killers."

We don’t use that construction. Or at least we’re not supposed to. The Associated Press has said in its stylebook since before the Dutch bought Manhattan that accused killer, accused murderer and similar constructions are forbidden.

The reason is simple. When you write "accused killer," you are identifying the person as a killer who happens to have been accused of the crime. In articles about sexual abuse of children by clergy, "accused priest" did not mean someone who had been accused of being a priest, but someone who was a priest who had been charged with a crime.

The rationale behind the reason is also simple. Newspapers should take seriously the presumption of innocence in criminal proceedings. It is not our business to convict people of crimes before judges and juries have acted.

That is also the reason that newspapers are careful about the word murder. While in common usage it can mean a killing, it has a stricter legal meaning. Legally, a person is not a murderer until conviction for murder. Someone who has caused the death of another person and is convicted of manslaughter, for example, is not a murderer. So we avoid using murder until a defendant stands convicted of the charge. Killing and, for the Latinists, homicide are perfectly clear and satisfactory terms.

For this morning’s lapse, we can hold accountable an accused reporter, an accused assigning editor and a clutch of accused copy editors.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.