Grammar Moses: It's all 'well' and 'good'

"Here's something you might have some fun with in Grammar Moses," wrote Jim Slusher, our deputy managing editor for Opinion, who really should be the regular author of this column.

Consider this passage from Dan Biss' op-ed piece on why he should be governor: "I'm running because I believe we can fully fund our schools, expand access to health care and create well-paying jobs when we build a tax system that makes the wealthiest pay their fair share."

Lest you think I'm about to mock Mr. Biss, who is a very bright man, listen to what Mr. Slusher has to say:

"I suspect that 99 times out of a hundred we hear politicians promise 'good-paying jobs.' Perhaps they are good jobs that pay money - in which case there would be no hyphen: 'good paying jobs' or another option 'good, paying jobs.' But no educated person would say, 'This job pays good.' One would say the job 'pays well.' So Biss is correct (and manages to sound pretty natural still) to use 'well-paying jobs.'"

Jim is correct, of course, but I was interested in his 99 out of 100 theory.

Googles' Ngram Viewer, which tracks word and phrase usage in books, shows that neither "good-paying jobs" nor "well-paying jobs" was present until 1886, when "good-paying jobs" registered as a blip in literature.

That's not surprising, given that this was during the Gilded Age in the U.S. when wages were growing rapidly.

"Well-paying jobs" arrived on the scene during the latter part of World War I and quickly overcame its predecessor. By 2000, "well-paying jobs" was being used four times as often.

Perhaps it's politicians in general who are perpetuating this foul usage. In our jobs, Jim and I sure hear enough from them.

Miles square

I remember hearing a news report that described an island as being 20 square miles and thinking that is a small island.

I had a hunch that the reporter misspoke, so I did a little research and learned that the island was much closer to 400 square miles. Now that's more like it.

What the reporter should have said was the island is 20 miles square. That's 20 miles on a side.

Though that's not entirely accurate, either. Most islands I'm aware of aren't square.

Why 'die'?

Tom Balz left me a message asking why we write that people "die" instead of "pass away," noting that the latter makes death easier to swallow.

This one is tricky.

There are many euphemisms for death that bereaved family members employ while working with funeral homes on their obituaries. How people choose to characterize their loved ones' deaths is up to them, and I'll offer no critiques here.

But death is death, and I see no reason to sugarcoat that in a news story.

I practice what I preach. When my mom died - two years ago today, in fact - I wrote in her lovingly funny obit that she had "died."

She likely would have rolled her eyes and issued an "Oh, brother" had I chosen any other words.

Miss you, Mom!

To the rest of you, 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.