Grammar Girl here. I'm in Jan Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today,

we're going to talk about further versus farther, and then we're going to look at the use and

history of Loram-Ipsum text. Looking at the difference between further and farther has been one of the top reasons people

come to my website for almost 20 years. So today, I'll try to help you with this continuing

conundrum. The quick and dirty tip for people using American English is to use farther for

physical distance and further for metaphorical or figurative

distance. The Merriam-Webster dictionary of English usage says it was 1906 when the first usage guide

called on writers to make this distinction between the two words. And it's easy to remember because

farther has the word far in it. and far obviously relates to physical distance.

For example, imagine Squiggly and Ardvark are in the Starship Enterprise, flying to a galaxy far, far away.

But Squiggly gets bored and starts mercilessly bugging Ardvark.

How much farther he keeps asking in despair.

Squeegli used farther because he was asking about physical distance.

Now, if Ardvark is frustrated with Squigley, which he surely will, he could respond,

If you complain further, I'm going to ask the captain to give you a job.

ArtVark used further because there isn't a strong sense of distance.

The meaning here is more metaphorical.

It's like more or anymore, as in, if you complain any more, I'll get you a job.

And he definitely isn't talking about physical

distance. Sometimes the quick and dirty tip doesn't work because it's hard to decide whether

you're talking about physical distance. For example, a listener named Lisa asked about the sentence,

I'm further along in my book than you are in yours. You could think of it as a physical

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