The Final Touch

The fol­low­ing sign demon­strates the impor­tance of word order.

At a Santa Fe gas sta­tion:
“We will sell gaso­line to any­one in a glass container.”

But what if I drive up in a car instead??

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And this one shows the impor­tance of unam­bigu­ous word choice.

In a New York drug­store:
“We dis­pense with accuracy.”

Remem­ber that “dis­pense” can mean to pre­pare and dis­trib­ute, as with med­ica­tion, but it can also mean to set aside or dis­re­gard some­thing (Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dic­tio­nary). Hmmm… do I want to go to that phar­macy or not??

You may have seen this piece some­where before — I don’t know the orig­i­nal sto­ry­teller — but it’s a good reminder to all of us about the impor­tance of (#1) being care­ful with our use of punc­tu­a­tion and (#2) hav­ing our impor­tant writ­ings proof­read by the prover­bial “sec­ond set of eyes” before they are released to the public.

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An Eng­lish pro­fes­sor wrote the words “A woman with­out her man is noth­ing” on the chalk­board and then asked his stu­dents to punc­tu­ate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote: “A woman, with­out her man, is nothing.”

How­ever, all the females in the class wrote: “A woman: with­out her, man is nothing.”

Punc­tu­a­tion is powerful!!!

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Thanks to my friend and col­league, Jay Sport of Jay Sport Man­age­ment Con­sult­ing Inc. (http://​www​.JaySportMC​.com) for pass­ing along this fun illustration.

So, a blond and a blonde walk into a bar– Wait! Is this a joke?

Well, only sort of. First of all, I am one of those “blondes” — less so now than when I was a kid; my hair’s got­ten darker with age, but I still think of myself as such — and I grew up hear­ing “dumb-blonde jokes.” So an open­ing like in the first line of this post kind of makes me want to groan.

On the other hand, it’s not a joke at all — and this “blonde” who has always con­sid­ered her­self fairly smart has to admit she learned some­thing new today! (Which, of course, is always a good thing to do — and to be able to admit that you do.) Read­ing along in The Gram­mar Devo­tional by “Gram­mar Girl” Mignon Fog­a­rty (see my recent rec­om­men­da­tion), I came upon her entry for Sat­ur­day of Week 2, address­ing whether “blond” or “blonde” was the cor­rect spelling. I expected her to say either one is fine, but guess what?! I was wrong!

Did you know that the word(s) came into Eng­lish from the French lan­guage, in which the noun “blond” referred to a light-haired guy and the noun “blonde” referred to a light-haired gal? (French, like so many lan­guages, though not Eng­lish, dis­tin­guishes between mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine nouns.) OK…and here’s the kicker: for some rea­son I’m not sure of, any use of the word as an adjec­tive leaves off the “e”: “A blond–haired woman and a blond–haired man were walk­ing together.”

I did not know that! Does this sur­prise you as well… or am I just a “dumb blond” — er, I mean, “blonde”?! (Don’t answer that!)