“Our” word is being horribly abused, and it’s about time that someone brings it to light.

After last week, I decided it was time to say something. Please, stay with me, there is a direct hay-baling angle to all of this.

I was trained as a forage agronomist, not a journalist. However, once I got a job as an extension agronomist out of graduate school, it became clear to me that I was going to be saddled with doing a lot of writing — a monthly newsletter, weekly newspaper columns, magazine features, and more technical fact sheets. For this reason, I tried to teach myself the proper use of words, grammar, and punctuation. Truthfully, I got by but was just marginally successful in my march to being the next Mark Twain.

It wasn’t until I took over the managing editor role of Hay & Forage Grower that I really had to buckle down on my writing skills. The goal is always to write everything right. Of course, it’s an unattainable goal, but we go to great lengths to make it happen. Spending hours every week writing and editing not only my own stuff but that of others, I now find myself being more critical of any writing, especially glaring, repeated mistakes. Usually, I keep my thoughts to myself.

So, what happened last week?

I was reading a fiction novel, as I often do in the evening. This particular book was written by a university English professor who has authored many other books. It was published by one of the largest such companies in the country. The book, itself, was hailed by the New York Times as one of the “Best 10 Books of 2024,” and it is a great story.

Reading along, I came to a scene where the book’s two main characters were taking on water in their canoe. It was then that the imperiled shipmates began to “bale (water) with abandon.” This was soon followed by second reference to “baling water.”

How exactly do you “bale” water?

Perhaps this wouldn’t have bothered me quite so much if I hadn’t just finished a series of fiction novels by another best-selling author/rancher who made several references to “bailing wire.” What? Is the wire leaving the scene?

These books and writers are the best of the best. What’s going on here?

Looking within

To be sure, I often see farmers and ranchers use “bail” on social media when they mean “bale.” As a forage industry, we should be better, but it’s social media where all rules of the fourth grade English class are thrown out the window. Still, if you own a hay baler and bale hay, it’s probably a good thing to get it right. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who notices.

Perhaps the greatest “oops” in regard to “baling” versus “bailing” that I’ve encountered was on a farm I visited several years ago. I was out in the field taking photos and immediately noticed the great injustice in big vinyl letters on the side of the operator’s large square baler. It read, “XXX Custom Square Bailing.” As the farmer stopped to clear a plug in the pickup, I asked him if he knew that the word “baling” was spelled wrong on both sides of his baler. His answer, after taking a closer look, was, “You’re right — I never even noticed that.”

To conclude, you can bail water from a trough, put up bail for an employee who had a little too much fun the night before, and bail from any situation you choose to leave, but you can’t bail hay. If you’ve made this mistake, don’t feel bad . . . some of the best authors and proofreaders in the world have done the same, but it’s time we all get it right.