Howz That?

What about how?  The answer to that question is there is a legal battle brewing over whether "how" is trademarkable, according to a front-page story in today's The New York Times.  Who would have thought that "how" would ever rise to such importance.  Why it's almost at the very end of the list journalism students are traditionally required to memorize--who, what, when, where, how and why --implying, in other words, that its presence could be a mere afterthought.  But that is not the case, when you get right down to it, for the litigants in The Times’ story:  Where one might once have minimized or dismissed the term, the modern meaning of how, for them at least, is that it matters.  Or is it that the matter with how is that it has grown to have increased meaning?  We will most likely have to wait for one or more legal minds to parse the English language to find out.  Now, how about that! 

-- Jeff Bogart