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January 1st, 2026 (Permalink)
Struck by "Lightening"
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter―it's the difference between the lightening and the lightning.1
Consider my shock when I recently read the following sentence in a book: "Consider that it is far more likely for someone to be struck twice by lightening if they live on a property that attracts electricity.2" "Lightening" is the present participle of "to lighten", meaning to make lighter either in the sense of less dark or less heavy3. So, "lightening" refers to the process of something becoming lighter.
What would it mean for someone to be "struck" by lightening even once, let alone twice? If you take GLP-1 and lose a lot of weight in a short time, are you struck by lightening? I suppose if you put down a heavy object you've been carrying a long time, you might be struck by a sudden sensation of lightness. But what would that have to do with living "on a property that attracts electricity"?
Obviously, the word intended in the sentence was "lightning", with no "e". "Lightning" refers to the familiar electrical discharge that occurs in the atmosphere during storms and is followed by thunder4. Moreover, the phrase "struck by lightning" is the common way of describing what happens when lightning passes through an object. That lightning is an electrical phenomenon explains why living on a property that attracts electricity would increase the chance of being struck.
Misspelling "lightning" by adding an incorrect "e" is a common enough error that I've seen it more than once before coming upon the example above, so my shock at seeing it was not quite like being struck by lightning. Two of my reference books on common errors in English mention the "lightning" versus "lightening" confusion, which is further evidence that this error is common5.
Notes:
- ↑ This is what Mark Twain should have said; what he actually said was: "…[T]he difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter―'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning." Emphasis in the original. See: George Bainton, ed., The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners (1890), pp. 87f.
- ↑ James C. Zimring, Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking (2022), p. 102.
- ↑ "Lightening", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 12/31/2025.
- ↑ "Lightning", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 12/31/2025.
- ↑ The two are:
- Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's 101 Misused Words You'll Never Confuse Again (2011)
- Harry Shaw, Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions (Revised edition, 1987)
December 25th, 2025 (Permalink)
A Logicians' Club Christmas*
Those fun-loving logicians of the Logicians' Club celebrate Christmas every year with a holiday party, and what a wild party it is! This year every member wore a hat that was either red or green, which were taken to be Christmas colors.
The president of the club was the first to arrive at the venue chosen for the party. The first thing he did was make sure that the room had no mirrors or other shiny surfaces. Not that a club member would willingly cheat, but that he or she might accidentally catch a glimpse of his or her hat in such a reflective surface.
When the four other members arrived, it was time to begin the festivities. The four members were seated in a circle facing each other, and the president walked behind them, pulling a hat out of an opaque bag and placing it on the head of each member in turn. Of course, the logicians could see the colors of the hats on the heads of the other three members, but they could not see the color of the hats on their own heads.
Once the hats were in place, the president issued the following order to the players: "If you can see a red hat, stand up!" All four members stood.
The president continued: "If you can see a green hat, sit down!" All four members sat down.
Finally, the president ordered: "If you know what color your hat is, stand up!" Again, all four members stood.
How many red hats were the four members wearing?
Are you Logicians' Club material? If you can solve this problem, you are!
Extra Credit: How did the four members know the colors of their own hats?
Keep in mind that all members of the Logicians' Club are perfect logicians, which means that if it is possible for them to deduce something based on the information they have, they will do so. Also, members of the club will never lie while playing a game, unless lying is part of the game; lying is not part of this game.
There were two red hats and two green hats.
Explanation: When all four logicians stood up, this meant that there had to be at least two red hats among the four. Obviously, if there were no red hats, no one would have stood up, and if there were only one red hat then the person wearing the red hat would not have stood up since he or she would have seen only green hats. Therefore, there were at least two red hats.
The same is true when all four sat down, with "green" and "red" switched, so there had to be at least two green hats. Given that there were at least two red hats and at least two green hats, it follows that there were exactly two red and exactly two green hats.
Extra Credit Solution: By the time they all sat down again, all four logicians had figured out the number of red and green hats, as explained above, which would have enabled them to deduce the color of their own hats. Each of them would have seen two hats of one color and one of the other, which would have told him or her that his or her own hat was of the other color.
* ↑ If you haven't had enough Christmas puzzles at the Logicians' Club, see: Christmas at the New Logicians' Club, 12/25/2021.
December 24th, 2025 (Permalink)
An Antidote for Christmas?
Though the word "antidotes" sounds and is spelled similarly to "anecdotes", it's hard to think of two nouns whose meaning is more different. An antidote is a type of medicine that prevents or limits the harm of a poison1, whereas an anecdote is a type of short story, often funny and based on one's own or another's experience2.
A story published exactly a year ago included the following anecdote: "When 'A Christmas Story' premiered in 1983, screenwriter Jean Shepherd pulled antidotes from his own life to create the Christmas comedy…3". It's hard to imagine what it would mean for Shepherd to pull antidotes from his life, unless someone poisoned the egg nog. Is there an antidote for fruitcake? Instead, he took anecdotes from his life to write the screenplay.
As I usually do for these entries on easily confused word pairs, I tried the example sentence in several free online spelling and grammar checkers. One checker did correct "antidotes" to "anecdotes", but most others found no errors, though one found a mistake but wouldn't tell me what it was unless I upgraded to "Premium"―no thank you. The only "mistake" that yet another checker found was the pronoun "his", "correcting" it to "her", presumably because of the spelling of Shepherd's first name―again, no thank you.
I don't know how common the confusion of "antidote" and "anecdote" is, and none of the reference books I usually check discuss it, but I've seen it prior to coming across the above example though I don't recall where. But that's just anecdotal evidence.
Notes:
- ↑ "Antidote", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 12/23/2025.
- ↑ "Anecdote", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 12/23/2025.
- ↑ Here's the original, uncorrected article, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: Alexandra Bellusci, "Why 'A Christmas Story' writer Jean Shepherd was kicked off set―and Jack Nicholson lost out on role", The New York Post, 12/24/2024; and here's the current, corrected version: Alexandra Bellusci, "Why 'A Christmas Story' writer Jean Shepherd was kicked off set―and Jack Nicholson lost out on role", The New York Post, 12/24/2024.
December 12th, 2025 (Permalink)
Java Jive Headline1
Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world. Most of us enjoy a cup o' joe in the morning to wake us up, and we need a cup or two later in the day to maintain our level of alertness. Now with the boilerplate out of the way, let's get on with it.
Check out the following headline:
This Daily Coffee Habit May Help Slow the Aging Process2
This is a typical health news headline designed to get you curious enough to read the story beneath without giving away the punchline. Like old tabloid newspaper headlines, they are often part of a bait-and-switch operation: the headline is the bait that makes you think you're going to get a nice juicy worm, then the article switches it for a nasty sharp hook. In this case, here's the hook: "A study has found that people with major psychiatric conditions may age more slowly at the cellular level if they drink 3-4 cups of coffee a day." Ouch!
Articles claiming that coffee can cure whatever ails you, including old age, are a regular feature of the medical press, which is one reason I started this "Java Jive" series many years ago. Moreover, medical researchers seem to have figured out that it's a good way to get attention for their research, so they provide a bottomless cup of coffee studies for journalists to report. There were even headlines during the pandemic claiming that coffee could ward off COVID3.
An obvious problem with the study reported by the article beneath the headline is that the subjects studied were, as quoted above, people with "major psychiatric conditions". Here's how the study describes the subjects: "The study encompassed 436 participants (schizophrenia spectrum (SZ; n=259) and affective disorders (bipolar type 1=114, type II=39, bipolar not otherwise specified (NOS)=8, and major depressive disorder with psychosis=16, n=177)), selected from the Norwegian Thematically Organised Psychosis (TOP) study, collected between 2007 and 2018."4 How can the study's results be generalized to the whole population given that people with severe mental illnesses may differ from other people in many ways? This is a biased sample if there ever was one5.
Even if the results were not intended to be generalized to the general population, do the results even apply to the sub-population with severe mental illnesses? According to the study6, coffee consumption was self-reported by the study subjects. Given that there's evidence that people in general do a poor job of accurately reporting their consumption of food and drink7, can we really trust psychotics and schizophrenics to do so?
The study on which this press release was based was published in the once-prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ)―I don't mean to suggest that it's not still prestigious, though this makes me wonder; perhaps it's gone the way of The Lancet8. To be fair, it was actually published in a spin-off journal called BMJ Mental Health, which may be to the BMJ what Law & Order: Toronto9 is to Law & Order.
With this study and six dollars you can get a short Pecan Crunch Oatmilk Latte at Starbucks10. Just don't expect to live longer.
Notes:
- ↑ Previous entries in this series:
- Java Jive, 5/21/2012
- Java Jive: A Second Cup, 7/14/2017
- Java Jive: A Refill, 11/6/2017
- Honey, I shrunk my brain!, 7/27/2021
- A Tale of Two Headlines, 12/15/2024
- ↑ BMJ Group, "This Daily Coffee Habit May Help Slow the Aging Process", SciTech Daily, 12/7/2025.
- ↑ For instance: Nick Brown, "Study: Regularly Drinking Coffee Reduces COVID-19 Infection Risk", Daily Coffee News, 11/21/2023.
- ↑ Vid Mlakar, et al., "Coffee intake is associated with telomere length in severe mental disorders", BMJ Mental Health, 11/25/2025. There are a lot of authors listed on this study; literally, too many to count.
- ↑ See: Biased Sample.
- ↑ Op. cit., see Abstract under "Methods".
- ↑ For instance, see: Catherine Offord, "People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research", Science, 1/20/2025.
- ↑ See: Ian Birrell, "Why won't The Lancet admit it was wrong?", UnHerd, 7/6/2021.
- ↑ I didn't make this up; see: "Law and Order | Toronto | Criminal Intent", Citytv+, accessed: 12/12/2025. I guess technically it's not a spin-off of Law & Order but a spin-off of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, so it's a spin-off of a spin-off.
- ↑ I didn't make this up; see: "Pecan Crunch Oatmilk Latte", Starbucks, accessed: 12/12/2025.
Disclaimer & Disclosure: I am not a psychiatrist nor do I play one on the web. The content in this entry is for informational purposes only and does not constitute psychiatric advice. Consult your psychiatrist before beginning any coffee therapy routine.
December 6th, 2025 (Permalink)
How to Lie With Notes 31: Anatomy of a Citation
As a reader of research, once you understand the purposes of notes and the cryptic abbreviations used, the structure of the note itself will be self-explanatory. Exactly how a note is formatted is unimportant as long as sufficient information is included to allow you to identify the source cited and consult it.
There are a few common citation styles for scholarly publications, such as those of the Modern Language Association, the American Psychological Association, and the University of Chicago. There are also specialized styles for some disciplines, and publications or publishers may have their own styles. I won't discuss any of these in detail because the differences between them are unimportant to the reader or researcher2. Most style choices are arbitrary, like which side of the road you drive on, and will get you where you want to go. So, if you're the writer choose one and stick to it, or if you're writing for a specific publication, find out what style it uses and follow that.
As a reader or researcher, all that you need to know is how to use a citation to check a source, and to do that you need the following information:
- Author's or authors' full name(s): There are many writers with the same last name, such as Stephen King, Florence King, Laurie King, et al. So, a first name should be included except for some rare writers known by a single name, such as Plato, Voltaire, Trevanian, et al. If first and last names are not enough to distinguish two writers, then a middle name or initial is needed. For instance, there were two writers of detective stories named John MacDonald: John Dann MacDonald―usually known by his middle initial―and John Ross Macdonald―who dropped the "John" later and became known as just Ross Macdonald3.
- The publication's full title: The full title of the work cited is needed for the same reason as for the author's full name: there may be more than one work with the same title. There may even be more than one book with a seemingly unusual title. For instance, there are at least three books entitled The Third Bullet by three different authors: John Dickson Carr4, Stephen Hunter5, and Arnold C. Stream6. The full title of Carr's book is The Third Bullet and Other Stories, so that should be included in the citation to distinguish it from the other two books. If the book has a subtitle, it can be included to distinguish it from others. In some cases, the title alone is not enough to differentiate two or more works, in which case the authors' names or date of publication will have to do the job. For example, Hunter's and Stream's books have the same full title and no subtitles7.
If the work is an article published in a magazine, journal, or newspaper, then the title of the article itself should be included along with the full title of the periodical. As with books, there are often multiple periodicals with the same title. In particular, there are many newspapers called "The Times", "The Herald", "The Tribune", etc., so newspapers are usually differentiated by their place of publication. For instance, there are the London Times, New York Times, and Washington Times. In some cases, the name of the city is incorporated into the title, as in The New York Times, but in other cases it is not, as in The Times of London.
- The date of publication: There are two reasons to include the date a work is published in a citation:
- To make it possible to find the specific edition of a book or the particular issue of a periodical. For books, only the year of publication is usually needed, since it would be unusual for more than one edition to appear in a year. For periodicals, the information needed is determined by their frequency of publication. For example, for monthly magazines, the month and year should be cited; for daily newspapers, the full date should be included. Such information is needed to track down the source cited; there's nothing more frustrating than trying to find an article in a periodical for which only the year of publication is given.
- Knowing when a work is published is often useful information even if you never consult the work itself. For instance, an old work might be too out-of-date to be useful, or a very recent work might suffer from current faddish biases and parochialism that an older work would lack. In both cases, the date of publication might lead you to look for a different source.
- Edition number: For books that go through multiple editions, the edition number may be needed. Some books, such as textbooks, may change significantly from edition to edition8, so it's important to know which edition is cited; others, such as novels, may not change significantly between editions, especially if the author is dead. When in doubt, if there is an edition number it should be cited.
- Page number(s): The only thing as frustrating as trying to track down a newspaper article when you lack a day of publication is looking for something in a large book when you don't have a page number. The main purpose of a note is to make it possible for the reader to check quotes or references that supposedly confirm claims, and failing to give sufficient information to do so defeats that purpose.
That's it. That is all that's needed in a citation. Many notes, as well as citation styles, include the name of the publisher and the place of publication, but I've never found these useful. Theoretically, if you want to get hold of a book you could contact the publisher directly, but who does that nowadays? This information was perhaps useful in the past, but today you can easily find almost any published book from an online bookseller. The place of publication is even less likely to be of value than the publisher's name; who needs to know that a book was published in Evanston, Illinois? For these reasons, I suggest omitting this information from citations, which would save some space at the foot of the page; that it continues to be recommended by style guides is, I suspect, the result of scholarly inertia.
Notes:
- ↑ Previous entries in this series:
- Introduction, 10/23/2025
- Latin Abbreviations, 11/13/2025
- ↑ For a side-by-side comparison of the three styles, see: " Side by Side Comparison Chart―APA, Chicago, and MLA", Stonehill College, 7/2018.
- ↑ John D. MacDonald was the author's real name; (John) Ross Macdonald was a pseudonym for Kenneth Millar. In addition to the middle initial and middle name, the two authors spelled their common last name differently: John D. with a capital "D" and Ross with a lowercase "d". See: "John D. MacDonald", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed: 12/6/2025 and "Ross Macdonald", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed: 12/6/2025.
- ↑ John Dickson Carr, The Third Bullet and Other Stories (1954).
- ↑ Stephen Hunter, The Third Bullet (2013).
- ↑ Arnold C. Stream, The Third Bullet (1986).
- ↑ However, Hunter's book is referred to as "A Bob Lee Swagger Novel" and, though I'm unsure whether that counts as a subtitle, it could be used to distinguish it from Stream's book.
- ↑ However, one of the dirty little secrets of textbook publishing is that many such books are reprinted in new editions every few years with the only significant changes in the exercises. This is done to try to undercut the resale market in texts and to defeat students trying to cheat on exercises. Also, obviously, it makes a lot of money for the publisher.