I don't necessarily want to change the subject, only to comment--prompted by Johanna's reference to the "inevitable changes in the language"--about an apparent change in the language that I would be interested in hearing comment on. In the past few days, once in a poem and again in a novel, both works by reasonably highly regarded writers--I have come across the word "hung" to refer to people who had committed suicide by stringing themselves up: e.g., "One poor client hung himself from a basement rafter--...." I recall being taught that beef (and other animal) carcasses were "hung" for aging purposes, but that human beings were "hanged." Is this now a laughably quaint distinction? Norm Carlson Western Michigan University