Deadlines

Just a thought on the word deadline. It appears to have been first used (around 1864) as the line prisoners in the American Civil War were not allowed to cross. "A dead-line is a line over which no man could pass and live.'' Later the meaning changed to "time limit'', for example for submitting newspaper articles and more recently papers for conferences.

I always think of a deadline as the day to finish a paper: checking layout, spelling, and references. One of my colleagues puts an alternate definition into practice: a deadline "is the date on which to start writing a paper''. The reason he usually gives for this is that he is too busy. Not writing papers I suppose ...