"The more I know, the less I understand," the philosopher Don Henley sang in one of his more memorable lyrics.

Those words came to mind amid the reaction to a story in Tuesday's paper (and online the day before) that revealed the identity of a body that had been found in an Olmsted Township pond almost two weeks earlier. (Police on Saturday announced they had made an arrest in the case, but had not yet charged a 36-year-old man.)

The victim turned out to be a transgender person (in this case, a person who was born one sex but identified as the other), and the tone and content of the story provoked an ire from the transgender community that was staggering -- and, to some of us, completely unexpected.

So the question becomes: Why?

A Plain Dealer story on April 21 described the victim as a slender black man, "oddly clothed," wearing a Betty Boop tank top, three black bras, a hooded jacket and naked from the waist down. The victim had been stabbed multiple times, tied with rope and weighted with a block of concrete.

If anyone objected to that description at the time, it escaped my notice.

Then Olmsted Township police announced on Monday that they knew who the victim was, and reporter John Caniglia was dispatched to the scene. Police identified the victim as "Carl Edward Acoff, an African-American male, 20 years of age, from Cleveland."

Caniglia did what reporters do. He obtained a photo, talked to the coroner's office for details about the death, asked police for the names of family members, and checked Municipal Court for any arrest records or other information.

In his story, he repeated the information from the original report about how Acoff was dressed and injured, wrote that police said Acoff often presented himself as a woman, and chronicled several run-ins with the law and two short jail sentences that had resulted from disturbances on RTA buses having to do with Acoff's gender identity and possession of drugs and hormones used to treat low estrogen levels in women. He noted that Acoff's family had not responded to multiple interview requests.

And he referred to Acoff as a male, using male pronouns.

When the story was published, Caniglia and his editors began to get emails from all over the country, objecting to the tone of the story, the use of male pronouns, the description of Acoff's clothing and the recounting of his criminal record.

Some were cordial. Some were profane. Some were threatening. Nearly all were angry.

Caniglia was stunned.

"I was trying to be as sensitive as possible," he said. "I never had a thought to be unfair or hurt somebody who was already brutally slain."

The bulk of the objections stemmed from the use of the male pronouns. The Plain Dealer generally follows Associated Press style, which at one time specified using female pronouns for someone born a male only if a sex-change process had begun.

However, several years ago, the AP changed its style on transgender references to the following: "Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly."

The transgender community knows this. Caniglia and his editors did not. The story was in the paper when they were made aware of the change in AP style, but editors hurriedly went back into the online version, taking the words "oddly dressed" out of the headline and making the references gender neutral. Along the way, in some references to the body, "he" became "it," until that was changed -- which only served to increase the ire of some readers.

I don't agree with the critics who argue that the way Acoff was dressed and Acoff's run-ins with the law were not pertinent to the story. Details like that, particularly when they are out of the ordinary, are a natural part of reporting. I do think it's unfortunate that Caniglia wasn't able to interview family or friends, who might have added a more complete perspective and given the story a different tone.

The AP style change is understandable, but perplexing.

"Where do we draw the line?" said Chris Quinn, the editor in charge of the paper's local coverage. "What's a cop to do when filling out the gender form of a police report? What's a census taker to write? What about a driver's license?"

Quinn said future stories will say something like, "Acoff self-identified as a transgender woman so, for the purposes of this story, will be identified with female pronouns."

The outcry over the story had much to do with tone. The details a writer chooses to include and how they are presented matter, but a reporter working against deadline often concentrates primarily on the facts. No harm was intended, but many people reading it felt that the story diminished someone with whom they identified and empathized. This experience drove home to all of us the need for sensitivity in writing about any group, and particularly the transgender community.

One thing should be noted, however: Often the objections to the way this story was handled pointed out the hardships people who are transgender have traditionally suffered. But in asking for sensitivity and understanding, many gave none -- making their objections in unbelievably vitriolic language.

Mistakes were made here, but none was made out of malevolence or an intent to injure.