Grammar Moses: Why discriminate against the simplicity of 'L'?

I enjoy football like the next guy, and I will be watching the Super Bowl tonight on my big screen while making bad food choices as many of you will.

But one thing will gnaw at me that probably won't bother you any more than this year's Go Daddy commercial.

What will bother me is not the X's and O's of football, but the X's and L's and V's and I's that are taking a break from this year's game.

Sports fans everywhere proudly wear sweatshirts emblazoned with an XXL on the front, while no one would be caught dead with a paltry L sweatshirt. There seems to be wholesale discrimination against the letter L, with the Golden Anniversary Super Bowl eschewing the simple stand-alone Roman numeral L for Super Bowl 50.

How could the NFL make us suffer through Super Bowl XXXVIII - not the game, a great one, or the wardrobe malfunction - but the use of SEVEN Roman numerals, only to discard them when the NFL arrived at the simplest count since Super Bowl X?

We won't get another chance at this until Super Bowl C in 2066, and I dare say I won't be around to see that one.

My prediction: To avoid any connection to concussions, the NFL will instead call it Super Bowl XXXXXXXXXX.

That is, if there still is an NFL in 2066.

Orientated

Reader Bob Shepard of Huntley writes: "I wonder if you had addressed the difference between 'oriented' and 'orientated.' I know people use them interchangeably, but I was taught 'orientated' meant 'facing toward the orient.'"

The fact is, Bob, the words can be used interchangeably, though "orientated" is what grammar guru Bryan Garner calls a needless variant of "oriented."

Why does it exist? Because it looks like it should be the root of the word "orientation."

While "orientated" is a word, "oriented" is the preferred usage and is used much more often.

"Orienteering" is a wacky racing sport in which contestants are given a map and a compass and put in unfamiliar terrain. The winner finds his or her way to a destination first.

My assumption, Bob, is at some point someone engaged in orienteering faces east.

We aren't that violent

Metro Editor Lisa Miner and I were just talking about how violent journalists - even mild-mannered suburban entertainment-obsessed editors such as she - must appear to others, judging by how we talk about our jobs.

We target "buried leads," we employ "death heads" and we keep our back issues in a "morgue." We use bullets freely to make our points.

But perhaps the most off-putting phrase to the unindoctrinated is how we gleefully "kill widows."

It has nothing to do with the obits. A widow is a word that sits alone on a line, taking up space.

(That is not to suggest we feel human widows simply take up space, as the word "space" did in the previous paragraph.)

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is assistant 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.