Grammar Moses: Did you see the ellipse? Unlikely.
On Monday, while everyone was marveling at the big doings in space, I was shaking my head in disbelief.
I heard two people ask others in passing, "Have you seen the ellipse yet?"
I restrained myself from answering, "Only graphically, because in this sense it's a mathematical concept you can't see with the naked eye - not even with those dorky cardboard eclipse-viewing glasses."
I know most people don't study words the way I do and that most people aren't constantly culling conversations for column fodder (it's a wonder anyone talks to me), but "eclipse" is a pretty common word. Especially if you have been living aboveground in Illinois during the past several months.
An "ellipse," according to the Oxford English Dictionary and a couple of geometry books moldering in my basement, is a regular oval shape traced by a point moving in a plane so that the sum of its distances from two other points (the foci) is constant; or resulting when a cone is cut by an oblique plane that does not intersect the base.
I'm pretty sure they weren't talking about the shape you'd see from above if you were to take a whack at my dunce cap with a razor-sharp katana.
Perhaps these two people were just testing me, because the lap the moon takes around Earth is in the shape of an ellipse!
One thing I'm sure of is they weren't referring to ... ellipses.
Can't hardly stand it
Janice Adams of Prospect Heights took umbrage with a recent Gene Lyons column on our editorial page.
"The first line of the article is: 'Out here in flyover country, you can't hardly go by the feed store ...'" Janice wrote. "Isn't the use of can't hardly incorrect, as it is a double negative and poor English?"
That's a difficult question to answer. In a strict sense, yes, it is a double negative and not proper.
But writers write to their audience. And in Arkansas, from which Gene writes a column that is syndicated all over the place, "can't hardly" is a part of everyday speech.
Given that Gene is an Arkansas transplant, having been born in New Jersey and having earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, my guess is he can spot a double negative from a country mile.
His homespun style is part of his charm. So we give him license to write in the vernacular.
False ranges
There should be a logic to our writing. But sometimes we lose that in our quest to show ranges of things.
There are true ranges: Today's temperature will vary from 65 degrees to 84 degrees. A true range requires things from a limited set. In this case, the set of possible temperatures.
And then there are false ranges, and I'm not talking about the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
A false range links together disparate items.
Assistant Managing Editor Neil Holdway flagged a false range for me in a story we wrote for Page 1.
"(Her) job ranges from shaving assistance to teaching how to open a potato chip bag to detecting why one of the adults with developmental disabilities she cares for is injuring himself."
Those are three things related only by virtue of the fact that this woman performs all three tasks.
If you were talking about a process - from washing to rinsing to drying to putting away dishes - you're A-OK. And that's because they're all part of a same corralable thing.
So if you're writing and you come to a from/to construction, apply the brakes and determine whether you have a true range.
And if you ever start to say or write "everything ranging from," start over. You're not going to list everything in that admittedly limited set of things.
Until we meet again
I'll be taking the next two weeks off and I haven't had the time to work ahead, so there is no need to call or email to ask whether I finally have been fired. But you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be road sign photos in your future.
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.