Grammar Moses: What will a fine day cost me?

I was talking to a neighbor recently about residing his house, and I realized that "residing" with an S sound and "residing" with a Z sound could cause some confusion if ours were a written conversation.

After all, I reside in a resided house.

Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and could be pronounced differently.

Interesting that while I was thinking about that topic, I received the following email from Stephen Foust of Batavia: "A while back I lived in New England where we enjoyed bucolic rural drives, particularly during foliage season. There often appeared on the back roads of New Hampshire a road sign declaring 'Fine for Littering.' I suppose that's fitting for the Live Free or Die state, but I am wondering if there are any other states where littering is fine. Or is that just in New Hampshire?"

Stephen's example is much better than mine, because the two definitions for "fine" are largely opposite.

I told him about my residing issue, and he one-upped me: "How about the guys who resent their emails?"

When in doubt, employ a hyphen. It'll provide some clarity.

Just because

Susan Adamowski of Arlington Heights, like many followers of this column, is a retired English teacher.

"I've fought strongly against the 'is because' construction - and now I see it in the Daily Herald!" she wrote regarding an editorial. "A Daily Herald staff person wrote 'Unfortunately, the reason the old guard board members got trounced is because ...' Am I just being English-teacherish or is this construction now legit?

First, allow me to commend you on coining "English-teacherish." That's epitaph worthy.

If you're an English teacher or a newspaper editor, you tend toward prescriptivism. It provides order in an otherwise disorderly existence. It establishes standards.

Plenty of descriptivists will tell us we're sticks in the mud, that we're unwilling to accept how people actually use words.

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage comes down on the side of "that," noting that "because" is logically redundant after "reason."

As is my wont, I compared the two phrases in Google's Ngram Viewer, which uses a vast database of words found in literature, to determine which is more popular.

While the two phrases were used roughly the same number of times in the early 1800s, by 1845 "the reason that" construction exploded in popularity. These days, "the reason that" is used 10 times as often as the "because" construction.

Is using "because" a hanging offense? No. But I prefer "that," as, it seems, do most writers of literature.

Everywhere a sign

It's difficult to get through a day without seeing a misspelled sign. Perhaps I just have a keen eye for such things. But so does our tax watchdog editor, Jake Griffin, who photographed the back of a moving truck for me.

In keeping with my policy of not outing the offending party, I will not include the photo here. But I will tell you that the company caters to both commercial and "residentual" customers.

Call them when you don't need your furniture delivered right away - just residentually.

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.