Mark Your Dictionaries

"Tank" is now the official, not-at-all-slangy term for "fall." (In a related development, "rise" has become "spike.")

There's Only One Child Myth

What I'm pretty sure Time is talking about is "the only-child myth." A myth about only children, not the only myth about children.

(If anyone cites "the '-ly' rule" as an excuse for this ridiculous refusal to hyphenate, I'm going to, in the words of a certain Holly Hunter character, lose it.)

Reinventing the newspaper

When 'Might' Makes Wrong

Some self-styled sticklers I know, perhaps still smarting at the " 'May' is for permission" lecture they got when they asked "Can I go to the bathroom?" in first grade, insist on changing "may" to "might" whenever they see it used in a non-permission sense. That can be fine -- "I might go to the party" may/might indeed be better than "I may go to the party" -- but it can also screw things up.

Be especially careful when the word "have" is involved. Observe:

"She may have been killed."
"Oh, dear. I hope she just got lost and we hear from her soon."

"She might have been killed."
"So true. Thank goodness she was wearing her seat belt."

(If you read the former example as a quote from a mob boss giving instructions to a hit man, proper English usage is the least of your problems.)

When 'Domestic' Doesn't Mean Domestic

I pointed out in "The Elephants of Style" that Samuel Adams often shows up on bars' lists of "imported" beer, and that phenomenon bubbled up at the tavern where the American Copy Editors Society toasted the conclusion of its recent conference in Philadelphia.

We were given wristbands that entitled us to $3 pints of domestic draft beer, and so I took a look at the taps and pointed to a Pennsylvania microbrew. That would cost more than $3, the bartender told me, adding that " 'Domestic' means Bud, Miller, Coors . . ."

It might be time for the more descriptivist dictionaries to add that:

6. ordinary or inexpensive [domestic beer]

I settled for a Yuengling, brewed in the town of my birth, which might qualify as premium elsewhere but is "domestic" in both senses of the word in Pennsylvania. (Is there a term that means "non-premium" but wouldn't turn off the marketing types? "Regular beer," to follow the gasoline analogy, falls a little short.)