Did Ford.ca get your farther–further grammar goat?

Should Ford have used the word farther instead of further for promotional displays at the Women's World Curling Championships? They definitely needn't have capitalized the F-word in their tagline, and missed out sentence final punctuation as well.

Word-choice arguments, as you might imagine, can go full circle. For starters, an Oxford Dictionaries' grammar and usage resource made no distinctions, when talking about distance; it argued, "[B]oth are equally correct."

But isn't that like arguing two stones are equally close to the center of the house? If you watched the end of semi-final play between Japan and Russia yesterday (relative time), you may recall that the Japanese team quickly conceded a second point for closeness in the house on the 10th end, and won outright with two points of their own in the 11th.

Thus, perhaps, the Oxford Dictionaries' site conceded, "... [except] in various abstract and metaphorical contexts" (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/farther-or-further).

Cambridge Dictionaries Online's argument included similar nuances: "There is no difference in meaning between them," when talking about distance. However, "[t]here are some occasions when we can use further[,] but not farther. / We use further before a noun to mean 'extra', 'additional' or 'a higher level'"
(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/farther-farthest-or-further-furthest).

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary Online called farther a "var[iant] of further …" (2005, inaccessible after first viewing), but wouldn't reveal the definition of further without a purchase or subscription. The definition of one word isn't much of a sample to preview, eh?

Grammar Girl surmised, "The quick and dirty tip is to use 'farther' for physical distance and 'further' for metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It's easy to remember because 'farther' has the word 'far' in it, and 'far' obviously relates to physical distance" (http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/further-versus-farther).

Grammar Monster concluded, "If you're unsure which to use[,] because it's difficult to make a distinction between physical and figurative distance, opt for further" (http://grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/further_farther.htm).

You don't think Ford marketeers were unsure, do you? 

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One of 41 Women in TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2014

Can you spot Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in the line-up below? It's easy if you filter the TIME 100 display by age. She's one of only two under-twenties and the only under-twenty activist.

You can read what Gabrielle Giffords, a survivor of a different assassination attempt, wrote about Malala by clicking on the thumbnail photo of Malala in the TIME 100 display.

Interestingly enough, eight of the total eleven activists are women, and three of those eleven are from Asia. Do you recognise anyone else?

Image source: TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World in 2014

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Malala Yousafzai Honored by Astronomers

Amy Mainser, a NASA scientist in charge of a deep-space telescope called NEOWISE that discovered an asteroid previously called 2010 ML48, asked the International Astronomical Union to rename the asteroid after the youngest-ever Nobel prize winner, Malala Yousafzai.

"Among the strong women of history who have already had NEOWISE-discovered asteroids named for them are civil rights activist Rosa Parks, conservationist Wangari Maathai, abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and singer Aretha Franklin" (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboaratory, Asteroid Named for Nobel Prize Winner Joins Historic Lineup, 15 April 2015).

Image from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Used with permission

Screenshot from the NASA JPL's Small-Body Database Browser:
Orbit Diagram for 316201 Malala

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