•June 7, 2023•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

Edith Graber wrote from the River Glen Retirement Center in St. Charles with a compliment coupled with a complaint about a headline.
“Not done celebrating” was the headline for a girls soccer story.
“My mother used to say, ‘Done is for eggs; the word you want is “finished,”’” Edith wrote.
I’ll have you know, Edith, that my quoting your quote within a quote required me to count quotation marks on my fingers.
“Done” has a variety of applications. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your mother gave you this advice during the previous century, when my mom told me that if I were nauseous I made other people sick.
Language evolves, and the distinctions moms make are sometimes handed down by their moms, they’re sometimes arbitrary and they’re sometimes a bit narrow.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.