p. 24 | An Explanation:

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1866

An Explanation:

CORRESPONDENTS in writing to this Office sometimes only give the initials of their given name or names. In publishing from such, if they are strangers to us, we can only give the name, as we do not know whether it is a brother or sister. Concerning such an instance, a sister has just written: “In giving an extract from my last letter, I see you do not own me as a sister.” This is not the reason. The usual title of sister was not prefixed to her communication, because having only the initial of her given name, we could not tell which it was, and did not wish to incur the liability of throwing upon the person the embarrassment of a mistake in the matter. We offer this as an explanation why names sometimes appear in our paper without the usual title prefixed.