The word ditto dates some of us

JUNE CASAGRANDE

In what may prove a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece of investigative

journalism combined with deductive reasoning, I can now report that

Costa Mesa Mayor Gary Monahan is probably more than 18 years old.

Through what amazing power of divination was I able to arrive at

this conclusion, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

At Monday’s meeting of the Costa Mesa City Council, Monahan

offered a solution for a rather ugly problem. As about 20 people

rushed the dais to speak out on a parking issue on Cornell Drive,

Monahan spotted an opportunity to expedite an otherwise long and loud

process: Those who wanted to echo the majority of comments already

voiced could just say, “Ditto.”

I’ve never attended a Costa Mesa City Council meeting, but I’ve

heard enough horror stories of late-night gum flapping that I wasn’t

surprised to learn that his suggestion went straight down the

commode: Pretty much everyone vented the full fury of his or her

spleen on the council.

Everyone who remembers the origin of the word ditto, please raise

your hand. Everyone now having sense memories of alcohol-scented

pieces of paper, just “run off” the machines, raise your other hand.

(Perhaps you should put your hands down now before your nosy neighbor

peeking through your kitchen window thinks you’re being robbed and

calls the cops.)

When I was in school, back in the year Umpteen Umpty Something,

dittoes were what we called those blue-ink, alcohol-smelling copies

of things such as quizzes that teachers “ran off” on machines

everyone called mimeographs. Then along came the Xerox machine, and

faster than you could say “change toner cartridge,” those other

machines disappeared.

But the word lived on. According to Webster’s New Word College

Dictionary, ditto means “the same,” “a duplicate,” “as said above” or

“likewise.”

Still, the people most inclined to use the word are people who

actually remember -- or think they remember -- what dittoes were.

Hence my near certainty that Monahan is at least of voting age.

But, as I found out last week, even old people such as Monahan and

yours truly might be more confused than even we knew. A quick search

for the terms “mimeograph” and “ditto” produce a link to (hold on to

your copy of Modern Maturity, Gary; this ain’t pretty) the Early

Office Museum’s page, “Antique Copying Machines.”

(Let us pause briefly to recover from the effect of the words

“museum” and “antique” in reference to our youth.)

I had always thought that the terms “mimeograph” and “ditto” were

interchangeable. Not so. Ditto was actually a brand name of something

called a “spirit duplicator,” which used gelatin to absorb ink and

press it onto blank pages. Mimeograph machines used stencils to

mass-produce copies. The “ditto” technology was invented (not by

Ditto, by the way) in 1923. Mimeographs were invented in the late

1800s.

Technology has done some wild things to our language. Terms such

as “default,” “online,” “download,” “upload,” “log on,” “Internet,”

“boot up,” “Web,” “drive,” “nano,” “link,” “dot-com,” “cyber,”

“browser,” “surfer,” “blog,” “server” and “byte” have come into play

in ways no one could’ve seen coming just a few decades ago. And

they’ve created more than a bit of confusion about the language.

For example, Associated Press style just a few years back dictated

that “on-line” should be hyphenated in most cases. As basically

everyone under the sun ignored AP’s dictate, the self-appointed

authority changed its tune. Online is now “one word in all cases for

the computer connection term.”

They’ve been a little slower to come around on “offline,” though.

After years of not taking a position on the matter, leaving writers

to defer to Webster’s ruling that the adjective “off-line” is

hyphenated, the 2002 edition of the AP guide finally included mention

of this in its new Internet Guide: “‘offline,’ no hyphen, is an

exception to Webster’s.”

However, that’s not how you’ll see it in The Pilot. Los Angeles

Times style, which The Pilot follows, defers back to Webster’s,

requiring a hyphen.

So remember, online is one word, off-line nobody can agree upon

and therefore nobody knows.

Moving on to equally unstable stable subjects, while it’s long

been true that Internet and Web are both capitalized, until recently

there was no such word as “website.” It was “Web site.” Not so

anymore, at least not according to The Times. All of a sudden,

“website” is the way to go.

As you can see, old people, it’s important to try to keep up with

the times. So next time it’s your turn to address Monahan and

friends, and you want to repeat something the person before you

already said, just say “Xerox.” No, wait. Don’t.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

june.casagrande@latimes.com.