Nancy Reagan Thanks for asking I removed the mention of the late as everyone dies sometime and not every mention of those who have died has the late preceding I like to assume that the readers here are intelligent and that they for the most part know that he has died and if they don t you can click the link and find out more about him I made a long argument in the talk page for PETA about why it should be discouraged in most cases to include that phrase Would the World Book encyclopedia refer to the dead as the late I doubt it and we re here to improve on the print encyclopedias