The restaurant is small: ten tables total, plus four stools at the counter. 8:30 a.m. on a weekday, a woman walks past the "Please wait to be seated sign" and sniffs around the booths. The restaurant is still half empty. The host attempts to guide her toward one table, then another, this one next to a table with seated customers. The woman looks at the table, turns, and says:

"I don't like sitting that close to other people."

image: drericmorrison.com

Disusage presents the contradictions and foibles of usage manuals, style guides, and the quirky folks who love them. This week: making use of “usage.”

usage, use, user. Those who write usage or user when they mean no more than use must be presumed to do so for one of two bad reasons: that they prefer either the longer word to the shorter (see LONG VARIANTS) or the unusual one to the common (see WORKING AND STYLISH WORDS). Usage implies a manner of using (e.g. harsh usage), especially of habitual or customary practice creating a right or standard (modern English usage). An example of its misuse is There is a serious shortage of X-ray films due to increasing usage in all countries. User is a legal word for use (exercise of a right) and should be left to the lawyers.
—Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2nd edition, 1965

Definition of USAGE

1 a : firmly established and generally accepted practice or procedure

   b : a uniform certain reasonable lawful practice existing in a particular locality or occupation and binding persons entering into transactions chiefly on the basis of presumed familiarity

   c : the way in which words and phrases are actually used (as in a particular form or sense) in a language community

2 a : the action, amount, or mode of using <a decreased usage of electricity>
   b : manner of treating

—Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition 

“No matter what Merriam-Webster says I will continue to keen histrionically about ‘usage.’ Just say use, I say.”
—Internet user Olli Baker, commenting on “When Words Were Worth Fighting Over,” an article by Geoff Nunberg on NPR’s website.

Have an aspect of usage you want examined? Email me.

Image: historic photo from the New York City Municipal Archive, via the Atlantic

A weekly series that explores a featured theme by pairing classic quotations with urgent images. What recent news items inspired these textual/visual sets? Leave your guesses in the comments, and check back next Wednesday for the answers.

"You’d be surprised how expensive it costs to look this cheap."

—Steven Tyler

"Me, I want to crack up at that completely ... But the look on Bop-Shop Carl? Pissing his pants slowly with his face."

—Bill Peters (from Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality)

"Two different faces, but in tight places
We think and we act as one"

—Irving Berlin

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

—Virginia Woolf

"Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."

—Bob Dylan

See the connections? Write your guesses in the comments — and feel free to leave your own "pants" quotes — and check in next Wednesday to find the headlines that inspired these pairings.

Images: New York Daily News, Vulture, New York, CNN, Politico 

Answers to last week's installment:

• "He’s Back All Right, Now With a Memoir" (New York Times)
• "The Most Ridiculous Shoes You Will Ever See" (Jezebel)
• "RuPaul's All Stars Drag Race...returning October 22nd" (LogoTV)
• "BMX biker flies off bike in canyon jump" (CBS News)
• "Greece Protest Photos: Naked Protesters, Swastikas And Hitler Homages Mark Merkel's Visit" (Huffington Post)