October 2007
Notes from Between the Cracks
by Robert C. Cumbow
I don’t hear people say “between the cracks” as much as I used to. For a long time, it was quite common for people to describe something that had been forgotten or overlooked as having fallen between the cracks. But then someone noticed, and politely pointed out, that “between the cracks” is where the floor is. The things that get lost aren’t those that fall between the cracks, onto the floorboards, but those that fall through the cracks. Somehow the word spread, and today one hears “through the cracks” a lot more often than the incorrect “between the cracks.”
On the other hand, it continues to be common to hear “between you and I.” This has been going on for many years, and no one knows how it got started. I suspect that it has to do with the huge number of elementary school kids who were corrected when saying “It’s me” or “me and Julie went to the movies.” They had “it is I” and “Julie and I” drummed into their heads in a way that, I suspect, caused them to believe that the whole thing had nothing to do with grammar, but rather that it was somehow impolite to use the word “me.” So regardless of whether they were in the nominative case or the objective case, they carefully and emphatically adopted the word “I.” It caught on, and it stuck. A great many well-educated people say “between you and I,” even though “between” is a preposition and if followed by pronouns, those must be in the objective case. “She stood between him and me,” not between “him and I” or, worse, between “he and I.”
Twixt and Tween
What got me thinking about “between” recently was seeing a whiteboard of instructions for members of the grueling swimming class that, I am happy to say, precedes my somewhat more relaxed morning lap swim. The instruction recommended something like “ten sets of five laps with a short rest between each.” Between each what? Between each set of five laps, supposedly. But how can you take a rest “between” a set of five laps? You can take a rest before the set or after the set, but I can’t quite imagine how you could take a rest between the set. Understanding the problem requires recognizing that the word “each” is singular, referring to an individual component of a group, while “between” is a word that requires two objects in order to have meaning. You can’t do something “between” one thing — even if that one thing is a set of laps —any more than you can stand or walk between one other person or choose between a candy bar.
So what should the sign have said? “Ten sets of five laps with a short rest between each two sets” is correct, but cumbersome. But what would have been wrong with “ten sets of five laps, each followed by a short rest”? I know, it leaves doubt as to what would have to follow the last set of laps — couldn’t you take a long rest then? But that ambiguity is less reasonable and less likely than the illogical, indeed impossible, construct created by “between each.”
It’s common sense that you can’t be “between” only one thing. More controversial, however, is the question of whether you can be between more than two things. The rule — which many people increasingly resist — is that “between” implies no more and no fewer than two things, and if you have more than two things, the preposition you want to use is “among.” Now a lot of folks don’t see anything wrong with “I had to choose between five candy bars.” But, as I noted above, the presence of exactly two objects is inherent in the meaning of “between.” The phrase “Angela was between Megan and Molly” means something: Megan was on one side of Angela and Molly was on the other. To say that Angela was between Megan, Molly, and Mortimer is meaningless. We have no idea where Angela would be if she was “between” three people. Of course, we don’t have a lot sharper idea where she was if she was “among” the same three people. But that’s because the word “among” is not supposed to convey precise location; it just means “in there somewhere.” The word “between,” on the other hand, exists for the purpose of identifying location with greater precision. Angela was among the 16 band members chosen to march in the SeaFair Parade, and she marched between Megan and Molly.
Granted, the confusion created by a phrase such as “just between the three of us” or “the continuing battle between the countries of the Middle East” is not earth-shaking. But part of the wonderful utility of the English language is that we have so many words that enable us, in a single word, to identify something that might otherwise take a much longer phrase (“between me and her” rather than “with me on one side and her on the other”). It behooves us to use such words with precision if they are to retain their usefulness. Already we have to say “on his back” and “on his front” because no one respects the difference between “supine” and “prone” anymore. The issue isn’t schoolmarmish “correctness”; it’s preserving the precision and versatility of our language’s treasure trove of words.
Foregone Conclusion
I’ve mentioned in previous columns that, in the law business, some words that most folks never or rarely use are quite common, and can easily get confused with more common similar words; so we in the legal profession have to be especially careful how we use them. One of these is the word “foregoing.” Because we often have to write or quote complex sentences or lists, and don’t want to have to stultify our readers by constantly repeating those constructions, we like to refer back to what has gone before, identifying it as “the foregoing.” The prefix “fore” is a shortened form of “before,” so the word properly means the thing that goes before.
But here’s the lookout: All too frequently, people write “forgoing” instead of “foregoing.” That’s a mistake. “Forgoing” is a different word, with a different meaning. To “forgo” something is to give it up: Since I am on a diet, I decided to forgo dessert. It’s not too hard to keep these terms straight, because “forgo” is almost always used in its present tense form, while “forego” is rarely found that way. When something comes before something else, we don’t often say the one thing “foregoes” the other (though we could). It’s much more common, however, to find “forego” in its gerund form (“notwithstanding the foregoing”) or in its participial form (“it’s a foregone conclusion”). So it’s in those forms that you want to make sure that the word you want is “foregone” (went before) not “forgone” (given up), or “foregoing” (preceding) not “forgoing” (deciding not to).
That “for-fore” prefix can be pretty troublesome. Many people confuse “forward” with the less common and much more limited “foreword.” The term “foreword” refers to introductory comments preceding a longer text. It is common to have a “Foreword” to a book or a report, and if you look at it you can see that it plainly means a “word” that comes “before.” The word “forward,” on the other hand, is an adjective or adverb meaning “ahead,” or a verb meaning to send something on to someone else.
Our “fore” problems don’t end there. A “forebear” is an ancestor, while to “forbear” means to avoid doing something. English majors and historians can keep that one straight by remembering the words on Shakespeare’s gravestone: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear to dig ye dust enclosed here …”
The Trouble with Spell-Checkers
But getting back to problems that arise in legal writing especially, we have particular difficulty when it comes to “therefore” and “therefor.” Part of the problem is that “therefor,” is a word that spell-checking software doesn’t recognize. In fact, even as I write this column, every time I type “therefor” Microsoft Word — which is sure that it is much smarter than I am and knows exactly what I want — dutifully changes it to “therefore.” I had to pause just now to put “therefor” into my dictionary, otherwise I’d have had to be institutionalized before finishing the article.
“Therefor” is akin to “thereto,” “thereafter,” “thereon,” and other such words, all of which use “there” in the since of “that thing” (usually meaning a foregoing thing). “Plaintiff is in the business of selling computers and parts and accessories therefor” means that plaintiff sells computers and also sells parts and accessories for those computers. “Therefore,” by contrast, means “for that reason” (usually the foregoing reason): “Julie was a police officer and therefore commanded respect in her community” means that Julie commanded respect for the reason that she was a police officer. In legal writing, we use “therefore” a lot more than most people do, and we use therefor a whole lot more than most people do, because most people don’t use it at all —which is why spell-checkers have never heard of it.
Another legal word that spell-checkers have never heard of is “tortious,” so be very careful when you run your spell-checker over that complaint for tortious interference with contractual relations, or you’ll end up puzzling the court with multiple references to “tortuous” interference — which may be agonizing, but isn’t illegal.
Still, that’s not as bad as the case of the young lawyer who wrote a brief dealing with the question of whether the court was right to have raised and disposed of an issue sua sponte. He accepted the spell-checker’s suggested corrections and filed a brief filled with judge-befuddling references to the humble sea sponge. Spell-checkers are a great tool, but there’s no substitute for proofreading your work.
Misleading Pleading
I read in a government rulemaking notice the other day that the purpose behind a new rule was “to ensure that consumers are not mislead.” This is a mistake that is becoming increasingly common. The author meant to write “misled” — the past tense of the verb “lead” is “led.” But because “lead” is not only a verb but also a noun, meaning a type of heavy metal, and that noun is pronounced “led” rather than “leed,” it’s easy for people to write “lead” when they mean “led.” Only careful proofing will catch this.
We get a similar problem with another word that is more common in law than in general usage: “plead.” The verb “plead” rhymes with the verb “lead”— both are pronounced with an “eed” sound. But the past tense of “plead” is properly “pleaded,” and that’s the only form accepted by Black’s. The colloquial “pled,” long frowned on, has become loosely acceptable in recent years, but is still not the preferred choice. And what is not acceptable at all is to render the past tense of “plead” as “plead.” If you must use “pled” as the past tense of “plead,” it has to be spelled “pled.” Avoid the problem by sticking with the long-accepted “pleaded.”
And above all, proofread your work.
Robert C. Cumbow is a shareholder at the Seattle firm of Graham & Dunn PC. He teaches at Seattle University School of Law and writes on law, language, and movies.
