Looking for Real Words

So I missed out on my promised Thursday post last week. A teething baby, a house full of guests ... ack.

There are a number of minor language topics on my mind this week: politically correct terms, thoughts on The Golden Compass series, questions of mass language manipulation. But the most recent one to come up is one of those niggly little issues that annoys me like a mosquito buzzing around my half-asleep ear every time I turn the light out.

I'm looking for words for two concepts that, as far as I know, don't have real words. The first is one I heard for the first time this week: heterosexual life partner. This, I'm told, is something like what a bosom friend used to be, except we don't really use that phrase anymore outside of bra shopping. My younger sister has one, and another old friend has one. But what an ugly thing to call the person you consider to be more than a best friend but less ... attached, shall we say, than a spouse! Besides which, to me it can be confused with the relationship of heterosexual people who live as spouses but aren't married.

In fact, I hate the word "partner" for describing that kind of relationship. It sounds so much like a business arrangement, nothing romantic or hopeful or optimistic in it, really.

Anyway, any good suggestions for heterosexual life partner?

The other is a little more complicated. It's a writing issue. I'll try to explain.

Sometimes you write a scene in a story, or go into a long thought-chain in an essay, in which the character or narrator is meant to be in a particular place -- this especially comes up in travel writing. And you get caught up in your narration or thoughts on the character or whatever, and your words go on long enough that the reader forgets where you are meant to be. When this happens, bringing the reader back to that place can be a little jarring.

So when you're revising, or someone's editing for you, you need to put in little placement reminders. For example, I was working on a colleague's essay about Cuba. She was describing sitting at an outdoor restaurant there, and was writing about Cuban economics and people's personal career situations and so on. She thought it went on too long, but all she needed was a little reminder that we were sitting in the restaurant: "The waiter brought us beers and I shifted the milk crate I was sitting on to let an old woman pass" or something like that.

I find these lines really important, and for myself I made up a shorthand name for them. I call them 'locator lines.' But I'm thinking there either must already exist a good term for them, or someone can come up something a little shorter or more poetic. Any ideas? If I haven't explained very well, please say so.