So why am I dropping it? First, I don’t think it buys any clarity. As far as I know there isn’t a single other Nicholas Kristof anywhere in the world, so I’m unlikely to be confused with Nicholas G. Kristof or Nicholas S. Kristof III.

More broadly, I think in the Internet age, the middle initial conveys a formality that is a bit of a barrier to our audience. It feels a bit ostentatious, even priggish. If my aim in my 20’s was gravitas, now I want to reach people and connect with them, and I wonder if the stuffiness of the middle initial isn’t a little off-putting. I doubt if it makes much difference, frankly, but at the margin I think that we’re moving to a kind of journalism that is more casual, more informal, more personal, and a very formal byline seems as out of place as a three-piece suit in the newsroom. Speaking of which, when I started at the Times in the business section in 1984, I wore a business suit and the middle initial was a nice accoutrement to pinstripes; now I wear an open collar, and I don’t need the middle initial any more than a necktie.