Today's column is a short interlude, or perhaps even intermission, from our usual political wonkery. This is due mostly to the fact that we're busy around ChrisWeigant.com Central preparing charts for tomorrow's "Obama Poll Watch" column.

Today, instead, we're going to pose a few stylistic grammatical questions to our readers, in order to see if our standards here are in need of adjustment or not. If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, then you can check out this rampant speculation over who is jockeying to take over Harry Reid's leadership position in the Senate, should he fail to be re-elected this November, as it is about as wonkily fascinating as you can get.

For those of you still reading, I have a couple issues that make me scratch my head when writing, editing, and formatting these columns. I guess what got me on this subject was writing about last week's State Of The Union address, and realizing that the term "laundry list" seemed a bit dated, and a bit strange. Many responded that laundry lists were a military thing, or a more urban thing, but I still stand by choosing "shopping list" over "laundry list" because it works better metaphorically.

I realize, however, that I'm fighting a pretty strong headwind on this one, though.

The next day, an even-more-trivial editorial decision faced me: one lion, or many lions? In other words, do you enter a "lion's den" or a "lions' den"? Usage of this one is kind of all over the map, with some even using the (quite obviously) incorrect "lions den." I always thought that the story of Daniel (from the Bible) cited multiple lions, so I wrote it in the plural "lions' den" for Friday's article. But then, to my chagrin, when editing I found I had posted it inconsistently, and had myself used "lion's den" within the same article whose title included "lions' den." I made it consistent -- plural everywhere -- and hoped nobody noticed.

But the "lions' den" theme was used by many to describe Obama's trip to the Republican House retreat, and I noticed that many used the singular (probably because it feels more natural to type it that way, I guess).

So I went and looked it up. Daniel 6:1-28 clearly talks about multiple lions sharing one den. While the King James Version uses "den of lions" throughout (obviating the need for an apostrophe), it also uses the phrase "lions' mouths" as well. Other versions of the Bible use "lions' den" pretty consistently. Meaning the plural "lions' den" is the correct usage.

On an unrelated subject, I've been wondering about my continued use of "healthcare" instead of "health care." This one I actually have spoken of previously, in a "Grammatical Note" at the end of an article from last June:

I am finally bowing to what is becoming the conventional usage of "healthcare" instead of "health care," and will be using this standard from now on. I don't know why, since I am usually at the forefront of making one compound word where others still use two, but "healthcare" has always just looked wrong to me. But with the debate heating up, I think it best to now lay this issue aside and get on the etymological bandwagon, as it were.

But it still bugs me, because no real consensus has emerged among editors across the land. Some make it a compound word when it is used as a modifier ("healthcare industry") but two words when used as a noun ("providing health care"). Some consistently use it one way or the other. I've been fairly consistent in my own usage since I posted that note, but it's always looked a little odd to me as a compound word.

To dodge the grammatical issue, I think I may start using "health insurance reform," as the White House has been calling it for months now. It's more accurate, and it avoids the "health care"/"healthcare" problem entirely.

The last issue is on capitalization. In particular, the word "independent" when referring to those American voters who are not Republicans and not Democrats (and not party-affiliated in any way, actually). This is another issue where editors can't agree. Since, by definition, people in this group are people who are not in any party, then perhaps it shouldn't be a proper noun. But it has always seemed a little demeaning to write something like "Democrats, Republicans, and independents" as it seems to cheapen the third group somewhat. On the other hand, when used as a modifier, it seems odd to write "Independent voters." I've been splitting this hair by using it lower-case when used generically as a modifier, but upper-case when used to refer (as a noun) to a distinct group of voters.

This is because of the rule of thumb that any political party gets capitalized, no matter the size. Meaning "Democrats" or "Democratic Party" is the norm. I run into the same problem with "libertarian" as I do with independent, since it describes both a philosophy and a party. Same with "populist," which I tend to capitalize no matter where I use it, for reasons beyond understanding. One other which gets confusing is "progressive," which is a philosophy but also describes a group of elected Democrats.

Strangely enough, the most recent entry in the political field seems easy, because even though they're not officially a party it just somehow seems right to capitalize "Tea Party" or "Tea Partier." Maybe it's the word "party" in there that causes this reaction, I'm not sure.

Anyway, in case you're wondering if this is building to some sort of rational conclusion, it's not. As I said, today's a busy day, so I just decided to indulge some grammatical musings and throw it out there to the commenters, if anyone's got any strong (or even mushy) opinions on any of these semantic quandaries. Tomorrow we'll get back to politics and polls, I promise.

-- Chris Weigant

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