The Howling Fantods

This from the CNN/AP article about the NYC DFW memorial service: "Wallace, who suffered from depression for much of his life, hung himself last month at his home in Claremont, California." Wallace would have been the first to take issue with the lax usage in this sentence. As Brian Garner notes in his guide to English usage, the one DFW reviewed so astutely and apparently read cover to cover: "Coats and pictures are 'hung,' and sometimes so are juries. But criminals found guilty of capital offenses are 'hanged' - at least in some jurisdictions. To be hanged is to be suspended by the neck with a rope or cord for the purpose of causing death." I learned this because I had to look up the correct usage after DFW's untimely death. That rule has been painfully seared into my memory.