A reader writes:
Maybe this was a typo, but just in case: All combs are, by definition, "tooth-combs." The expression you want here is "fine-toothed comb," meaning a comb with teeth so narrow and closely spaced that nothing will escape them (except, of course, hair, in the metaphor's concrete referent).
My nit is rightly picked.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/pedantic-dissent-of-the-day/208149/
