Grammar Moses: What if it is etched in stone?

Back when monks copied the Bible by hand with florid calligraphy on sheets of vellum, it was a pretty big deal to make a mistake.

When stone carvers of ancient Rome made a slip of the chisel or transposed a letter or numeral, you know a good flogging followed.

Thank God for the modern-day word processor. I've corrected a couple of things in the process of writing these three paragraphs without giving it much of a thought.

Today, if you want to carve your name on a rock, you do it with a small, hand-held grinding tool. But too often, I've seen, signmakers with grinders and woodburners could benefit from keeping a grammar and usage guide handy.

As they say, it IS etched in stone.

My wife and I took my dad out to celebrate Father's Day and happened upon an art show on the town square in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Not much interested me until, at the very end, I found a guy who was carving names on big chunks of granite for display outside one's home.

I shot a photo of one of his rocks that hit me, well, like a ton of bricks.

The Welche's, it read.

Before we made it back to the car, I posted a photo of it on Facebook with a simple caption: "No, no, no, no, no."

Many of you who follow me on Facebook responded accordingly:

"Sometimes you've got to look the other way, or at least hold open the possibility that there is a guy (or gal) named 'The Welche' who has ownership rights to that stone," wrote Bruce Steinberg.

"We know it's wrong, but we don't yet know how profoundly wrong," Kurt Wehrmeister wrote. "Let's deconstruct: the family name is Welch or Welche?"

"I'm speechles's," wrote Alison Storaasli.

If you're still not in on the joke, here it is: The carver seemed confused about plurals and possessives. His sign ran afoul of all the conventions.

If you're looking for a similar explanation, a couple of Novembers ago I wrote a column about the perils of addressing Christmas cards.

If the sign is meant to convey that the Welche or Welch family lives near the sign, it should read The Welches.

If the sign is meant to indicate that the Welch family owns the house, it should read The Welches' with "home" being understood. I don't like this option, but I'm trying to cover all possibilities.

If, as Mr. Steinberg suggested, there is someone known as The Welche, and you wanted to signify that this was his or her joint, you could write The Welche's.

But I found only a couple of folks named Welche on ancestry.com who settled in Wisconsin generations ago, and I couldn't find any Wisconsinites with the surname Welche on 411.com.

So I think it is just as likely that a person named "The Rock" owns a Welche.

Any thoughts on that, Dwayne Johnson?

Injured or sick?

As a former cop reporter, I am very aware of copspeak and how it is, to some extent, formalized and sometimes dreadfully inexact.

So I occasionally challenge our reporters on word use.

Reporter: "Big story. Seven people were injured in a hazmat at food processing factory. It's an ammonia leak, and firefighters are ventilating the building."

Me: "Were they injured or sickened?"

Reporter: "Knee-jerk reaction says they would be sickened, But I would also argue that if you are working at a warehouse and a forklift hits an ammonia tank, the smell causes you to become sick ... and it could be classified as a workplace injury."

I rarely get into an argument unless I know I can win. And I rarely have a conversation with a reporter lacking a comeback.

If a forklift hits an ammonia tank and the tank falls on you, then you're "injured." If the ammonia gas hitting your lungs causes you to feel ill, then you are "sickened."

Precision leads to better understanding.

Write carefully!

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