LANGUAGE CORNER
by Evan Jenkins

"Because" and "Since"
Since You Asked...
André E. Maillho, managing editor of Gambit, an alternative weekly in New Orleans, noticed that "you, like millions of other Americans, tend to use the word 'since' to convey a causative relationship," and added, "An old editor once scolded me to differentiate between 'since' and 'because' and it's been a reflex ever since...What's your take?"

That old editor once had a fairly numerous following, but the words are usually interchangeable. A problem can arise--maybe the reason for the old editor's edict--if "since" can be read mistakenly in its time sense: "Since she called him a fool, he has stopped campaigning" is ambiguous, for example. When there's no trap of that kind, "since" means "because" and vice versa.

Between/Among
Among You, Me, and the Lamppost?
A reader was kind enough to write to applaud our sermon on "unique" ("The One and Only," CJR, March/April 1997), but he also had a complaint. On the same page of the magazine, he noted, an article said, "And their success will depend largely on cooperation -- between the media and the court and, especially, BETWEEN members of the press" (reader's emphasis added). "Since 'members' is plural," the note asked, "should it not read 'among members of the press' "? Probably not. The rule that calls for "among" when more than two things are being discussed is a rule of thumb, and a rough one at that. In any group, the members may relate to each other in a block or, as seems more likely in the reader's example, individually -- A to B, A to C, B to A, and so on. So "between members of the press" makes more sense.

"Between" was also wanted in this passage from a newspaper report: "The F.B.I.'s refusal of the White House's request was a vivid example of the tensions among the White House, the Justice Department and the F.B.I." As the article made clear, the tensions arose between the White House and the Justice Department, between the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and between the White House and the F.B.I.

And for this one, you didn't need the context to know that the writer (or, at least as likely, the editor) was following a rule of thumb out the window: "...an airline charter service that operates among Havana, the Bahamas and Mexico." Those planes obviously fly between Havana and the Bahamas, to mention only one leg of their travels. (CJR, Sept./Oct. 1997)

addendum, May 13 1998:
This time, the rule of thumb applied. The announcer said of the officials at a basketball game that they had "49 years' experience between the three." The experience was the group's, and the word had to be "among."

Between/In Between; Call/Call Up; In Line/On Line
Three Very Little Words

From the e-mail:

Linda Leonhardt, a decorative painter in Great River, N.Y., reported a domestic dispute: "My husband and I were hotly discussing ‘between and in between’ the other day, and we haven’t settled a thing." "In" is clearly unnecessary in a phrase like "in between the pages," and in most standard writing is probably best omitted. And yet — the "in" doesn’t do any real harm, and may just add a sense of specificity lacking in an unaccompanied "between" (just as "in there, up there" and so on can be more informative than a mere "there"). And unlike the single word "between," "in between" sounds natural standing on its own: the fighters charged each other, and the referee was caught in between.

When a writer said "I called up" a source, Phil Dechman, a retired editor at the Independent in Grimsby, Ontario, was reminded of a conversation at a gathering of his parents and some of their friends when he was a child. "The use of ‘up’ was denigrated," he wrote, "after which one sharpie raised his glass and offered the toast, ‘Bottoms!’ " But in "call up," Mr. Dechman suggested, the "up" is always redundant. So it is, unless we’re talking about military forces. "Call up" may fit in intentionally casual or conversational writing, though.

As Wendy Bryan, a Web specialist at the Columbia Journalism School, noted, "online" (one word) has become a noun and adjective for the Internet universe. But she was puzzled when she read about someone who "stood on line at the bank machine," and wondered, "Do I get behind those on line, or may I remain in line?" "On line" is apparently a regionalism; The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage declares: "Few besides New Yorkers speak of standing on line. Follow the usage of the rest of the English-speaking world: in line." The "on" version may be spreading, but "in" is still the unassailable choice.

Between the Cracks
Cracks to Fill
Alex McKale (see "Hitting Milestones"), e-mailed to say: "Another phrase I've heard misused too frequently is 'between the cracks.' The speaker generally means 'through the cracks' or 'in the cracks.' "

Quite so. It's another phrase that turns intended meaning on its head (see also "Could/Couldn't Care Less"). The writer who suggested using a creeper "to plant in between the cracks of paving stones on a terrace" obviously wasn't thinking of some aggressive plant that might punch its way through paving stones, yet it was the stones that were "in between the cracks." Something was wanted to fill the space between the stones, and therefore in the cracks.

The same logic applies in figurative use: if certain insurance policies "have often fallen between the regulatory cracks," they haven't escaped bureaucratic attention, which is what the writer had in mind. They've landed in plain view on solid ground. They would enter the void only by falling through the cracks, or into them.

'Big of a'
Of Idiom

Warren Corbett, a writer and editor in Bethesda, Md., e-mailed about an annoying trend:

"At some point the phrase 'not that big a deal' became 'not that big of a deal.' I see it frequently. It grates on me, but I cannot articulate the distinction between 'not that big of a deal,' wrong in my eyes, and 'not that much of a problem,' obviously correct. If I'm not making too big a deal of it, please help."

The answer seems to lie largely with idiom -- the way things are expressed simply because they're expressed that way. But maybe there's logic involved, too. In "not that much of a problem" "much" is working as a noun. Using "of" with it seems natural, as it is, say, with "sort of a" and "kind of a" (when followed by singular nouns).

But with an adjective, in this case "big," the "of" seems unnatural and unidiomatic -- certainly redundant, and for some of us illiterate.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, in a lengthy essay under "of a," says that in phrases like "that big of a deal," the usage is relatively recent, oral American idiom, rare in print except in reported speech.

May it remain rare in print. And if people stop speaking that way, that will be fine, too. But Mr. Corbett remains concerned. "Idiom is defined by usage," he notes, "so 'not that big of a deal' is likely to become accepted."

If so, it won't be that big a deal. But it will be annoying.

Borne Out, with an "E"
Born to be Borne, or Vice Versa
It may have been just a typo, but it pops up from time to time: "Such reports seem born out by help-wanted advertising..." The correct spelling is "borne," with an "e." It's one of two past participles of "to bear," meaning (a) to give birth or (b) to carry. The one without the "e" is used for actual or figurative birth: a star is born, to a born loser; things are born of necessity or desperation; children are born out of wedlock. For everything else, including the cited form of "bear out," meaning to prove or confirm, add the "e." The star was borne by her unfortunate mother.

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
Dr. Denny Wilkins, assistant professor in St. Bonaventure University's School of Journalism and Mass Communcation, e-mailed to say he found that last sentence confusing, and that's not surprising. "Does the sentence mean," he asked, "The star was 'proven' or 'confirmed' by her unfortunate mother?" No, it means the star was carried (to birth, as it happens) by her mother, but the effort to be cute obviously led to unfortunate misunderstanding.

Addendum, April 7, 1999:
This was just exactly wrong: "But the brunt of the evening's jokes were born by the President and the other major impeachment figures..." Our word has nothing to do with birth; it has to do with carrying (a burden). The choice had to be "borne." (And, incidentally, the little verb should have been "was." All the jokes weren't borne by the president, only the brunt of them, so "jokes" can't take command of the sentence.)

Addendum, Dec. 19, 2000:
And finally -- Some people, the article said, "harbor anti-Semitic attitudes borne of years of conflict." The writer and editor didn't want that "e"; those attitudes were born of -- they arose from, were given birth to by -- those years of conflict. (The immortal H.W. Fowler's analogous citation was "The melancholy born of solitude.")

Both
Putting Two Together
The word "both" takes two elements and makes them one. With that in mind, this: "Both of the candidates tried to link their opponent to the perceived weaknesses of their parties." Their opponent? The two of them, together, have an opponent? Not what the writer meant; he meant, "Each of the candidates tried to link his opponent to the perceived weakness of his party." (Or, for absolute clarity, "...the opponent's party.")

Addendum, July 15, 1998:
One news article had it both ways. Near the beginning, "Both sides remain far apart in those discussions" was wrong; the two, together, weren't far apart from something else. Near the end, "But the lawyers said the two sides were still far apart on several fronts" got it right.

Brackets
The Bracket Blues
Except when excerpting text or in such devices as blurbs and pull-quotes, bracketing material inside quotations is, not to put too fine a point on it, an abomination.

1. Genuinely good quotes are mangled by bracketing: “Our prisons are full of [those who were] abused children,” he said. Clunk. The story had already set up the quote adequately, but if it hadn’t, a phrase before the quote, not that awful hiccup inside it, was the solution. (Explanations can also come after quotes, of course.)

2. Bracketing can puzzle readers and even make them suspicious (what did that guy really say?): “I read about teams getting competitive [by signing] other players,” he said. Anyone’s guess.

3. Bracketing assaults the ear, making for agonizing reading: “No one among the big three [networks] would run this long at the top [the beginning of the show] with these kinds of stories” now, Rather said. In a word, aargh. If a quote needs that much help (this one didn’t) why bother to quote at all?

4. Some bracketing just doesn’t make sense: “They started calling me Duke because I wear No. 4 [Duke Snider’s old number],” said Piercy. Just end the quoted matter at “4” and tell the rest.

Most importantly, bracketing is lazy — a kind of stenography. In that regard it’s a soulmate of that other hallmark of bad journalistic writing, the stringing-together of words before a name (CJR, January/ February 2000; “False Titles, etc.” on the Web). Both are abdications of our duty to write English sentences. On deadline? No time to write? Try. It could become a habit. (CJR, July/August 2002)

Addendum, 8/26/02

Absolutely not the way to handle the problem:

"If I’d had a walkie-talkie, I’d have told jockey Victor Espinoza to pull him up."

Real people do not say in conversation, "I’d have told jockey Victor Espinoza" — using the first name along with the job description. It just doesn’t happen. A Nexis search showed slight variations on the original words — some of the many versions had just "Victor," others just "him," others put brackets around "jockey" or "Espinoza" or, heaven help us, both. But "jockey Victor Espinoza" seems to have been a singular contortion.

Presumably an editor was loath to use brackets to provide the information missing with only "Victor" or "him." There were ways around that problem; there almost always are. But if the only alternative to brackets is language so unnatural it leaps off the page, swallow hard and use the brackets.

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