{"id":308,"date":"2008-07-29T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T18:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/tangenting-here\/"},"modified":"2015-05-21T10:39:18","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T16:39:18","slug":"tangenting-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/07\/tangenting-here\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Tangenting here, &#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I heard this last evening on the City of Houston&#8217;s HTV television channel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Problem:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe word &#8220;tangent&#8221; is not a verb.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Explanation:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe person who said &#8220;Tangenting here, &#8230;&#8221; was Harry J. Hayes, Director of the <a target=\"_new\" href=\"http:\/\/www.houstontx.gov\/solidwaste\/\">Solid Waste Department<\/a> for the City of Houston.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hayes was talking to the television interviewer about Houston&#8217;s recycling program, and he wanted to take the conversation in a tangential direction.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the word &#8220;tangent&#8221; is not a verb, so &#8220;tangenting&#8221; is nonsensical.<\/p>\n<p>For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;tangent&#8221; &#8212; 15,300,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;tangential&#8221; &#8212; 3,390,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;tangentially&#8221; &#8212; 1,080,000 matches<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;tangenting&#8221; &#8212; 3,750 matches<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This tells me that Web authors have used the word &#8220;tangent&#8221; or one of its variations <em>correctly<\/em> vs. <em>incorrectly<\/em> by a ratio of greater than 4,080-to-1, which is superb.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Solution:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8220;Going tangentially here, &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard this last evening on the City of Houston&#8217;s HTV television channel. Problem: The word &#8220;tangent&#8221; is not a verb. Explanation: The person who said &#8220;Tangenting here, &#8230;&#8221; was Harry J. Hayes, Director of the Solid Waste Department for the City of Houston. Mr. Hayes was talking to the television interviewer about Houston&#8217;s recycling&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verbs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Tangenting here, ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/07\/tangenting-here\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Tangenting here, ...&quot; - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I heard this last evening on the City of Houston&#8217;s HTV television channel. 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