1. Ooopsie for the Writer's Writer's Editor
All writers are haunted by the specter of typos (especially those that fly under spell-check radar). Here’s a recently unearthed, ironic nugget from The Golden Thread, the AWAI newsletter for copywriters (Issue #301, October 29, 2007):
WORDS OF WISDOM FROM HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS,
COPYWRITING LEGEND…Mary Had a WHAT???!!!
The unaware communicator may face a major curse -- his or her own education. This can lead these smart cookies to call upon a vocabulary that does not match their prospect's … (Think "stochastic" or "obfuscatory" or "insidious" or "fustian"!)...
...causing them to ignore one of the tenants of effective communication...
Those who know the big words may know the little words, but those who know the little words may not know the big words.
HCO is squarely aligned with the legendary Mr. Lewis: effective communication is really really good, and no tenets should be evicted…except for the supercilious ones.
2. Close Enough for Those Who Don't Know the Big Words Anyway
On the cover of the Office Edition, Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary (Revised Edition)- The Foremost Webster's Paperback Dictionary (c) 1996:
OVER 60,000 precise definitionsAnd, we superciliously assume (since we still use the old thing), only a few of the imprecise ones.
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