Crandolph’s Barbaric Yawp

This series of email exchanges between a fellow in my office in another department, Mr. X - a lawyer no less - and I is hereby posted for your amusement.  I know I said I wasn’t posting again soon but this was just too rich, and already written.  His comments are in italics; mine not.

I am in large part an editor.  Part of my job is editing text that comes out of Mr. X’s department.  Technically I don’t even believe my decisions are supposed to be questioned by that department.  This all started when I stuck one small comment 4 or 5 times on documents intended to tell our clients whether or not they are eligible to receive state benefits.  The phrase I asked about was that, according to our calculations, the client "may be eligible" to get something.  I didn’t know if that meant that we thought our clients were eligible or that they might be.  So I asked a few times where it appeared. "May or might?  It makes a difference." and in one case "May or might issue again - sorry to be a pain."  Simple and polite, seeking clarity.  Right?

Nope!  This was enough to start the email chain:

Email the First, X to me:

yo Chris,

Do you actually see a difference between may & might?

According to http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/034.html , "might can be used…to show diminished possibility (cf. may)"  Thus, as we write in the CCP text, you want us to choose between may & might in such contexts as "may still be eligible for this program" or "a Coordinated Care counselor will determine which of the program’s options you may be eligible for."  What’s the significance of the difference to you?

[X]

Email the Second, my response:

 Hello -

I do see a difference.  I don’t believe that "might is the past tense of may," (as per your Bartleby reference below) it’s not that simple at all.  Cite:

http://www.cjr.org/tools/lc/may.asp

In any event we’re talking in the present tense and potential future.  (From a purley formal linguistic standpoint English technically doesn’t have tenses as most languages do, but that’s the way we usually phrase it, so I’ll use the word "tense" in that sentence.)

In the present and future, might means there’s potential; something could happen but then again it could not.  So if we tell someone in a factsheet that they might be eligible for something it means we don’t know yet.  I’m not sure in context if you do or not; this might (no pun intended) be the right word in context.  And lacking any tone of voice in print it becomes a Rorscach test for the counselor and/or client in terms of whether or not it’s worth applying for something.  Depending on how you read it or your outlook you could say "Hey, I might be eligible!" :-)  or "Well, I only might be eligible." :-(   Nothing we can do about the outlook of the users, and might is again fine to use if we don’t know yet.

May on the other hand is a statement of permission.  As a present tense statement it’s a positive assertion that an authority or situational superior is indeed allowing you to do something.  "You may be eligible" is in effect a roundabout "You are eligible."  Or more likely a misuse of the formal definition of the word when might was intended.  I don’t know the exact context which is why I ask.

I realize that most Americans no longer make any distinction between the two in colloquial speech.  But if a client has questions & the counselor is hep to the may/might thing that could make a difference.  I imagine I know this sort of thing from being an ESL teacher (see this exercise for example: http://perso.wanadoo.es/autoenglish/gr.may.p.htm).  There’s that Mark Twain quote: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Then again I’m also one of those people who knows & gets persnickety about things like "inflammable" means "is likely to catch fire" and not "can’t be burned" and that there isn’t really any sense to the new word "irregardless" because "regardless" is what was meant all along.

"Damn kids get off my lawn… when I was your age…"

- Chris

I thought that settled things; self-depricating prose style, citation of fact, rationale. Case closed.  Right?  Of course not, this is an office job!  My reponse was then forwarded to another employee in X’s department, we’ll call her Y (biologically ironic, I know…) in case she comes up again.  She is being cc’ed now after all, and might reappear down the email chain.  She chimed in that may was dandy with her and the two of us should start debating the difference between dork and dweeb.  In my defense, I am an editor here, and it’s my job to clarify her department’s text.

Email the Third, Mr. X strikes back

yo Chris,
Can we agree that one who might be eligible is less likely to be eligible than one who may be eligible?  If so, I think we should always use may.  We can never use will as we can never make conclusive determinations.  And, correctly or not, might sounds too tenuous.  But then again, maybe we should just pepper the fact sheets with variants.  As Thoreau said, "Consistency is the hobgobblin of little minds."
[X]

At least we have an attempt at rationale there, however flawed.  If we really want to argue the fine points of my editing inquiries, let alone decisions, I consider myself well-armed…

Email the Fouth, my second response

Hello again -

> As Thoreau said, "Consistency is the hobgobblin of little minds."

Actually it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and "A foolish consistency…"  I doubt he had something against fixed meaning in words; that’s more Derrida.

> Can we agree that one who might be eligible is less likely to be eligible than one >who may be eligible?

By definition that has to be true, because "may be" means "absolutely is" eligible, and the only condition is the desire of the applicant to receive the benefit.

> If so, I think we should always use may.  We can never use will as we can never >make conclusive determinations.

That’s precisely the opposite conclusion I’d reach because "may be eligible" means almost the same thing as "will be."  The only difference is that "will" suggests in the future, but not, for some reason, now.  "May" means absolutely eligible now.

If indeed we’re not sure and never want to say we are, the word is "might."

Incidentally, I think you mean "We may never use will as we may never make conclusive determinations."  We’re certainly capable of it… [wink icon]

> And, correctly or not, might sounds too tenuous.

That’s because it means tenuous, and can’t be correctly used in another context.  If we are indeed trying to avoid making definitive statements in the factsheets then this is the way to go.  In English in any event; I’d also point out that when this is translated we’re talking about using rather specific helper verbs and ‘real’ tenses in other languages and our word choice here will have direct impact upon that.  Come to think of it that’s the decisive reason to use might when might is meant.

If you think I’m being difficult (heck, I’m being an editor [wink] ), check out Orson Welles doing a frozen peas commercial:

http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/03-1.html

I close with Lewis Carroll:
—-

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter, "Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!"

"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!"

"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse who seemed to be talking in his sleep "that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!"

- Chris

As of this writing people have gone home, there has not been a response and I haven’t yet been fired.  It’s not so much that people are wrong that bugs me, it’s when they hammer away at me for not being wrong.   I may now go home, and I shall. 

A near ‘perfect storm’ of factors has delayed several blog posts I have in my head from being posted.  Don’t worry, folks, I’m not suddenly content with the state of the world.  I’m becoming moderately busy at work, my laptop was out of commission for a very annoying reason (I had the precise problem that ultimately got addressed in this thread; and having found that thread at work was able to repair the machine myself) for almost a week, and then a friend borrowed it for a couple of nights.  I’m now housesitting for a week, and haven’t taken my machine with me, so my bookmarks and photos etc. are unavailable.  It also appears that in the summer my usual sources for congressional roll calls on votes, a very common topic of my posting as you all know, get a bit slow in forking over the data.  I haven’t been able to strike while those irons are hot.  Combine that with the usual Quizzo attendance and such and I’ve been e-AWOL.

An irony is that I believe I have more hits these past few weeks than any other analagous time period.  Not to fear, I’ll be ranting at you again shortly.  I’ll post of a few of the photos from Saigon noted the next post down when I return home, likely this weekend or early next week.  We’ll also review the sad state of the recent votes on CAFTA, the energy bill, flag-burning amendment etc etc etc …

Hang tight folks, look at the vicious Korean kids’ cute little hate drawings and get back to me early next week…

I swear if most host countries knew that ESL teachers think the host culture is a hoot and are documenting that with digital cameras, they’d never let us in.

This is a prime example; an English teacher in Korea, noting the hateful school-driven drawings of Korean schoolchildren whose government is in a snit over the ownership of some very small islands (and more likely their associated mineral and fishing rights).  The official propaganda process starts early in the vast majority of nations, and when you’re lucky you can get a glimpse of that in a direct fashion such as this which is devoid of cultural ambiguity.  Thus far my favorite was a very similar set of drawings that Vietnamese schoolkids drew of the United States which I saw at the Museum of the American War (formerly the less diplomatic Museum of American War Atrocities, but with the same exhibits) in Saigon.  The bombers were marked USA and the bombs marked BOM.

The Koreans just plain old don’t want their kids to like the Japanese.  I’m sure the feeling is mutual.

Another brick in my wall of argument that US society, with all of its problems, still ranks in the top 10% of nations in the level of dialog on cultural (mis)understanding.  It sure is a big scary world out there.

For the record, my favorite drawing is the bunny crapping out the major Japanese islands.  Let’s face it, that’s comedy gold.