Hi again, James!  Here's another installment in the current series:

JB>  I think we understand each other enough to understand
JB>  each others' shorthand?


          Yes, I imagine so....  :-)



JB>  How was the apostrophe there?


          It would be fine if the word "other" was plural, but in
"each other" and "one another" the pronoun is singular.
 Variants... each to the other, one to another.  The focus is on one-to-one
interaction either way.



JB>  This, with the dictionary in the other room.


          Ah.  It seems to me you've been having difficulty with the idea
of a perception/judgement continuum, but you've just provided some raw
material!  I tend to issue firm pronouncements about spelling &
traditional grammar because in most cases you are enquiring about what I
know or can look up somewhere.  I was blessed with a knack for such things,
and I taught them for umpteen years. I'm using judgement when I say the
spelling above is "right" or "wrong".  With regard to
comments such as the one above, however, I'd be more inclined to say
something like "Maybe you could keep the dictionary closer to your
computer??" I'm not telling you what you "should" do,
although a "J" person might do that. I've never been in your
house.  I'd like to keep my own dictionaries closer at hand but don't have
the space... so who am I to decide where you "should" keep your
reference books?  I may offer ideas, but I let you decide which ones will
work for you & which ones won't.  I'd accept a range of answers there. 
People who apparently have a strong "J" component in their
reasoning style often tell me I'm "wishy-washy" or
"woolly-minded", however, if I do such things.

          Another example is the article saying it's "cowardly"
to shoot a man from behind.  If pressed for an adjective, I'd have to say I
think it would be foolhardy for someone acting alone to stand in the road
& take aim in front of
a bunch of soldiers.  I imagine this person figured s/he could accomplish more
as a live coward than as a dead hero... cf. your comments about canoeing!  I'm
not saying I *approve* of what s/he did, just that I find it
*understandable*. But IMHO you are a "P" person, so I don't need
to explain that to you....  :-)

          Sometimes people change their delivery to avoid offending others,
or to be _au courant_, without changing their thinking patterns.  That's
probably why "political correctness" seems so ineffectual.  When
a friend showed Nora & me the "correct" way to get into bed,
I could see she was really trying not to use the word "should". 
I do appreciate that.  What she'd overlooked, however, was that the advice
she'd been given doesn't take hemiplegia into account!  My initial
reaction, which I kept to myself, was "Well... I guess we'll just have
to continue doing it incorrectly.  Nora's way seems to work for Nora,
anyhow."

          At one extreme are those who have firm ideas about what other
people should do, based on what works for them.  And at the other are those
like Evel Knievel... who eventually realized in middle age that his
daredevil stunts had taken their toll.  I think you & I are probably
somewhere in between....   :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+