Words Matter

One of my all-time favorite comedians is Norm Crosby. His claim to fame is his constant use of malapropisms. To site an example of Crosby’s lingo, electoral votes are not electoral. They are electrical…

I thought about Mr. Crosby recently when I was in a meeting outside of work. On a few occasions, one person caught my attention away from my doodling. It wasn’t due to the depth of the subject matter he went to great lengths to stand his ground upon. Rather it was his insistence that he wasn’t suggesting that everyone prescribe to his solution.

While he hadn’t used a malapropism, his misuse of prescribe made me giggle inside my own head. I don’t recall the substance of his rant, but I cannot forget his misuse of the word prescribe. I must confess there have been many occasions in my lifetime I had done exactly what he did. I’m a proud person and can assure you when he misused that word; a conversation took on a whole new life of its own inside my head. I began to wonder if people reacted toward my foible as I had (and am) when he blundered. I’m not so off my rails that I have experienced countless nights of sleep deprivation due to his misuse of the word. However, I would be lying if I denied it has given me some heightened awareness not only in speaking, but my focus toward writing as well. It is one thing to utter the wrong word, but completely another to write one.

I look at it this way. Once the word or words have been spoken, they drift through the air waves, land in a few ears along the way and eventually they evaporate—the harmless ones, anyway. For most, the error is lost to the universe. The written word, however, has a permanent resting place upon the page. Imagine for a moment if A Tale of Two Cities started out with “It was the best of times… it was the worse of times…”

I feel so much better now. I am elated to have this site to release my random anal retentive idiosyncrasies. I hope you are able to subscribe to the intentions I had when I started this incessant babble. Thank you for reading this to its bitter end…