Cliches: physical plant (stray tendril)

[Steve Wax <stevewx -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

Dick Dimock writes:
>And in the telephone business, they have

>Inside Plant    The works inside buildings, the exchange
>                wiring and electronics;

>Outside Plant   The wires, cables, telephone poles, manholes,
>                etc that are outside buildings.

>I assume bean counters would call these subdivisions of
>Physical Plant.

And then there's verboten parallelism, especially nettlesome to writers and
editors grappling with the adjectival form:

In-house        existing, originating, or carried on within a group
                or organization or its facilities (Webster's Ninth)

Out-house       where bean counters go after cooking the books and gobbling
the beans

Typically timorous workarounds devolve like this:

First draft: "in-house and outside suppliers"
Second draft: "inside and outside suppliers"

or

First draft: "in-house and external suppliers"
Second draft: "internal and external suppliers"

Finally, under cover of customer review, someone sharpens a pencil and ...

Final draft: "suppliers"

for which inside and outside readers are internally and externally grateful.

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steve wax                                stevewx -at- eskimo -dot- com
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Spilling the beans in El Seattle