In my town, flags are flying at half-staff to honor a fallen firefighter, including the one at my office. Yesterday, I had to verify that flags do indeed fly at half-staff and not half-mast as some media outlet in town were reporting. Luckily, my favorite argument settler, the trusty AP Stylebook settled this question.
Per the AP Stylebook, unless you are on a ship or at a naval station, flags are flown at half-staff. The h is lowercase and the word is hyphenated.
If and only if you are on a ship or at a naval station, then the flag is at half-mast. In this case, the h is lowercase and the word is hyphenated.
While the difference may appear obvious, a mast can only be on a ship or Navy related space (base, shipyard, station, air station, recruit depot. For further example: New York Naval Shipyard, Norfolk Naval Base, Naval Air Station Key West), many people seem to be mixing this up. Flags fly on flag poles when not related to the Navy.
Maybe its the anonymous nature of comments, bad grammar school or never learning to diagram a sentence, but the number of people who can’t figure out when to use who or when to use that in a sentence appears to increase every day.
To review from the AP Stylebook Who is for human beings and animals with a name. A person is always a who. Who is the subject and never the object of a sentence, clause or phrase. Example: The woman who rented the room left the window open.
That is for inanimate objects and animals without a name, including wild animals. That is never for people.
While my second favorite grammar source, Grammar Girl, does indicate a case could be made for using that for a person, she also writes, “I have to take the side of the people who prefer the strict rule. To me, using that when you are talking about a person makes them seem less than human. I always think of my friend who would only refer to his new stepmother as the woman that married my father. He was clearly trying to indicate his animosity and you wouldn’t want to do that accidentally.”