Grammar Moses: Does anybody really know what 'day' it is?

Sometimes the most innocuous-sounding questions turn out to be the biggest head-scratchers.

Gary Hayden of Lombard asked: "I once saw an article about a family in which three generations shared a birthday. Is it proper to say that they were born on the same day, or on the same date, as it would be impossible to grandpa, dad and son to all be born simultaneously?"

Fearing Gary is expecting an answer to a riddle, I press on with a straight answer.

A "day" is a 24-hour period between midnight one day and midnight the next. It's also - less precisely - the length of time between sunup and sundown.

A "date" is the day of the month or of the year as specified by a number. It's more oriented to a calendar and something that is recurring.

I suppose we could say the three guys were born on the "same day of the year" in this particular case without causing confusion, given there probably are obvious differences among the three generations. But "date" is so much simpler.

I once had a friend whose shared a birthday with his sister, even though she was born a year earlier.

There was all sorts of confusion, because many people assumed they were twins.

It's better to say they were born on the same date.

I was born on the same date as Stephen Colbert, Dennis Rodman and Harvey Keitel, and you'd never confuse us. I'm older than the first, funnier than the second and appear naked on-screen much less often than the third.

A sow's ear

One of the myriad things headline writers need to worry about is homographs - words that are spelled the same but might sound different and have different definitions.

It's especially tricky for headline writers, because to save space we routinely dump articles that point out whether a word is a noun.

"I read the headline: 'Deere sows record stock price growth with robust quarter,'" wrote Robert Guderian of Mundelein. "The picture that came to mind before I revisited the byline was that of a herd of sows working for Deere Corp. recording stock prices!"

When pigs fly, Robert.

That headline has two homographs, lending to Robert's faulty interpretation.

First, he read "sow" as a noun, as in female pig, and "record" as a verb, as in "to write down."

The headline writer intended for "sow" to be a punny agricultural verb meaning "to plant" and "record" as an adjective describing the stock price.

In retrospect, we probably stretched the pun a bit too far.

If you don't have a word-of-the-day calendar, let this substitute: "When pigs fly" is a literary device known as an "adynaton," a bit of hyperbole that reaches impossibility.

Scarcity?

I was driving back from Wisconsin a couple of weekends ago and ended up at a traffic light in Monroe.

There, in the middle of town, was the Dearth Buick GMC dealership.

What I thought was unusual was its lot was full of cars.

Cheesy question

"I often hear or see the term 'bleeding heart(ed),'" wrote Fred Mann. "Shouldn't it be 'bleating'? I was told this years ago, but I don't think I've ever witnessed it."

Unless you've received a heart transplant from a sheep, you're probably a "bleeding heart," someone who is excessively sympathetic. Consider, if you will, the bleeding heart of Jesus.

However, in researching this I did chance upon the Bleating Heart dairy in California, whose flagship cheese is, you guessed it, made from sheep's milk. They call it Fat Bottom Girl.

Pass the crackers.

Write carefully!

Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.