Death by splinters lays low newspapers; Misuse of the language causes concern.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Chris SINACOLA

COLUMN: Sina-cism

I picked up my newspapers Tuesday morning, began reading about the Supreme Court ruling upholding Indiana's voter ID law, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my fingers. It seems I had picked up a splinter.

It must have come from the page. After all, the Associated Press story about the ruling, written by reporter Deborah Hastings, spoke of a "splintered 6-3 ruling." Gritting my teeth, I finished reading the article, then turned to The New York Times to see how they had handled the story.

Reporter Linda Greenhouse began: "The Supreme Court upheld Indiana's voter identification law on Monday, concluding in a splintered decision ..."

I winced with pain a second time.

I went online to see if there might be more splinters amid the flotsam and jetsam of the media's coverage. There were. On Monday evening, just hours after the Court's ruling, another AP reporter, Mark Sherman, had filed a story that read: "In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement ..."

Three splinters in a single day were unprecedented. Some time later, my now carefully bandaged hands opened the Oxford English Dictionary to see if the word was truly warranted in the context of a 6-3 decision.

To splinter means to break into long, narrow pieces, "or in such a way as to leave a rough, jagged edge or projections." The word derives from the Dutch for the long strips of overlapping metal that were often used in medieval armor, and shows up in a romance about Richard the Lion-Hearted thus: "He was armyd in splentes of steel, And sat upon hys hors Favel."

The suggestion of jousting, crusades and bloody battles is appropriate, because the Supreme Court has been the arena in which some of our nation's contentious cultural and political battles have played out - matters such as school desegregation, abortion and affirmative action.

But after reading the court's decision, I could find little in the way of rough or jagged edges. As is usually the case, the justices had fallen into two camps. The lead opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens ran to 20 pages, and a concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia occupied another six. The dissent by Justice David Souter ran 30 pages, with another dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer of five pages.

To be fair, one could spend many pages - the Supreme Court consumed 65, after all - exploring the gradations of thought pertaining to the merits and demerits of picture...