Grammar girl here, today with Halloween in mind, I have a quick and dirty tip about the

difference between a casket and a coffin, and an excerpt from David Crystal's new book

Words in Time and Place that goes through the many words we have for death and dying.

And finally I saw something shocking in a formal document a few weeks ago, so I have

a tidbit about text messaging and language.

A reader named Stephen P. wrote, quote, I would love for you to do a show or newsletter

on casket and coffin.

Are they interchangeable?

Cofins and caskets are both boxes in which people are buried.

What makes them different is the shape.

A coffin is wider in the middle and narrower at the ends.

It's the shape you often see of the boxes standing on end in old movies where vampires sleep.

Or at the shape of the lawn decorations you can buy for Halloween.

Cofins are rectangular and are usually larger and more expensive than coffins.

The first time coffin was used to describe a burial box was in 1525, according to the

Oxford English Dictionary.

Although the dictionary also notes that the French version appeared around 1330, so it's

an old word.

Cascot is a more recent word and doesn't appear in the corpse box, a sense, until 1849

in America.

The origin of the word casket is unclear.

One theory is that it originally referred to a box for jewels and may have come from

...