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Grammar Moses: One person's 'incident' is another's life lesson

What makes this column such a joy to write is the opportunity to correspond with so many of you.

Especially — but not limited to — when it is complimentary.

“Your excellent column about the use of the word ‘incident' reminded me of an incident in my early years as a pastor ... clearly an ‘incident' since there was no massacre involved,” wrote now-retired pastor Paul Palmer, who lives in Arlington Heights. “No massacre, but the experience did provide me with a realization that the correct use of words is important.”

I've written before about the importance of knowing your audience, choosing your words with care and knowing what they mean.

With apologies to Donald J. Trump, exhibiting political correctness is very important in one-on-one conversations. I leave it to you to decide whether it is important on a broader scale.

Palmer tells the story of a brief exchange he had 46 or 47 years ago when he was at the First Presbyterian Church of Chickasha, Oklahoma. Clearly, it had a profound effect on him.

“One Sunday we had a guest organist, a distinguished musician, the head of our local college's music department,” Palmer wrote.

“In going over the order of worship prior to the time for worship, I pointed to a particular place in the Sunday bulletin and suggested, ‘Here it would be helpful if you would play a little incidental music.' To which she replied, ‘I will be happy to if first you will say some incidental words.'

“As you might conclude, we had no incidental music that day, nor did I say any incidental words, but her response did provide me with a much needed lesson in considering the way we use our language.”

What a fine homily for a Sunday column, Rev. Palmer.

He and his

Susan Adamowski of Arlington Heights pointed out a gaffe in a caption in last Sunday's newspaper: “So and so stayed at his house the past week to protect he and his neighbors' properties.”

In no case is “he” the appropriate word. “His and his neighbors' properties” is a shortened version of “his property and his neighbors' properties.”

The easiest way to avoid problems like this is to expand the sentence to see whether it makes sense.

Susan says she hasn't “seen an error this blatant in a long time.”

Diffuse?

Frank Moore of Naperville found a bigger one.

Errors in headlines almost always are more painful.

“Diffuse student loan time bomb” was the headline on a story in the USA Today Personal Finance section we publish on Sunday.

Alas, we are physically unable to edit that section because we merely take completed pages and insert them.

But it is no less embarrassing than if we'd done it ourselves.

“Did a computerized spell checker change ‘defuse' to ‘diffuse'?,” Frank inquired.

To defuse something is to remove the fuse from a bomb or, less literally, to reduce danger or tension.

To diffuse something is to spread it out across a wide area or a large group of people.

Clearly, defuse was the correct word for that headline.

Frank is sensitive to spell-checker errors. He works for Argonne National Laboratory, whose acronym is ANL.

I will let you ponder what problems could arise from that.

Write carefully, and don't rely too much on your spell-checker!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line.

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