A grammarian's Holy Grail

Chester taught English language at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, insisted that it was better to split the atom than the infinitive, that no self-respecting sentence began with a conjunction - he was, of course, quite right - and that a preposition's place was in the middle.

Apostrophes were drilled every day, their boots bright burnished, their appointments impeccable.

The lessons were well learned and much valued. One thing to which old Chester never got around, however - and which until now, has remained the most extra-terrestrial of mysteries - was the difference between "may" and "might".

The point is underlined in a note from Anne Gibbon in Darlington, who returns whence it came a cutting about the Weardale Railway from last Tuesday's paper.

"Its celebrations," we said, "may never have happened without a £990,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund."

Like a steam engine with a busted piston, it just didn't sound right - "Unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough to know why," added Mrs Gibbon, and found an echo here.

Help is at once at hand, however. Sensing a grammarian unsure how to suck eggs, Bloomsbury have kindly sent "Who's Whose", sub-titled "A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words".

Fazed or phased? Disinterested or uninterested? Prophesy or prophecy? May or might?

"Very generally speaking," writes Philip Gooden, the compiler, "may should be used when talking about a present or future possibility and might when talking about the past."

Simple, isn't it? The 250 page book, invaluable to all those without the benefit of Geoff Hill's third form English classes, costs £9.99. We may have more of it ere long.

CHIASMUS was something else we never got round to at grammar school, though it sounds like a cross between a Greek philosopher and a particularly nasty disease.

Chambers Dictionary defines it as "contrast by parallelism in reverse order"; a reader who simply signs himself William D offers two examples.

"Never let a fool kiss you - never let a kiss fool you" and "Do not live to eat, but eat to live."

Readers may be interested in sending others, suggests William D, and so they well may. For children of a more modern school, another little challenge follows at the end of the column.

HUE'S who, recent columns have dwelt upon the old meaning of the word "pink" as prostitute - as in Pink Lane, Newcastle - thus coming as a severe shock to Roger Pink in Melsonby, near Richmond, and an even bigger blow to his mum, Lily.

Remember the song about Lily the Pink? "She was horrified," says Roger. "Some unsavoury characters seem to have crept into our family."

The Pink tree, he insists, may blossom rather more attractively in the south - and explain why the nautical city of Portsmouth is such a Pink paradise.

Masts for Portsmouth's great ships, says the gently outraged Roger, couldn't easily be carried by cart road and so were brought from the forests on long, shallow draught boats known as pinks.

"We presume that the sailors who manned these craft could have been known as pink, or pinks, and this is a very well known name in the Portsmouth area.

"We have had a Lord Pink, lord mayors called Pink and various businesses in the Portsmouth area have had or included the name Pink. We have no knowledge of any brothels."

IF the ladies of the night form the oldest profession, the bookmakers may run them close. We stumble across an Echo report from March 1962 that the Stanley area of north-west Durham - then with 50,000 people - had 44 betting shops.

The greater news story, however, seemed to be that one of the 44 was managed by a woman, Mrs Hilda Gibbon.

"A lot of pensioners just bet sixpence each way," she said. "Bingo should be put down because it affects the women so much. It's a much bigger problem than racing."

Mrs Gibbon, we added colour consciously, had not only chosen the betting shop's light and dark blue exterior paint work - "I think it looks rather attractive" - but had also supplied a red convector heater.

What a pity it wasn't pink.

A LONG time since Gadfly registered an interest in car number plates, but this one - spotted in North Shields, a long way from home - is clearly irresistible to any self-respecting boy from the Boro.

OUR first and last word on the regional government debate: George Crowe rings from Spennymoor at a perfectly respectable time of day to report being awoken at 4.20am by a recorded message from John Prescott urging him to vote "Yes". That's another No, then.

LAST Saturday's At Your Service column recorded that the son of a 17th century rector of Romaldkirk, in Teesdale, much outraged the locals by "entangling sons and daughters of iniquity" in illicit wedding ceremonies on Barnard Castle bridge, between the jurisdiction of two bishops.

The union was sealed by jumping over a broomstick.

The phrase, well remembered from one of Brenda Lee's better songs, is said to date from the days of slavery in the southern American states, when no-one was much bothered about the slaves' domestic circumstances and broom leaping provided sufficient evidence of affiliation.

Nowadays there's nowt so common. Nowadays they live over the brush instead.

...and finally, a note for those who drive search engines and who know enough not to suppose that a search engine has a snow plough on the front.

Peter Sotheran in Redcar reports that the latest Internet game is called Google whacking - he sub-titles it "a fascinating time waster" - in which the search terms must comprise two successive but unconnected terms from a random page of the dictionary and the result must be a single entry.

Inverted commas are advisable, neither zero nor multiple returns count.

Peter's nearest is three with "forfeit forge", though the column's own search came up with 22 on the same terms - mostly, perhaps inevitably, from lists of words.

No time to waste, readers may fancy a go themselves. Another may day, perhaps even an explanation of how Portsmouth came by the name Pompey, next week.

Published: 10/11/2004