Saturday, April 16, 2011

Saturday Rerun: Another good one: "Have your pet spade or neutered"

Ladies and gentlemen, the point of today's sermonette is to remind all of us to be careful in writing and speaking. Just to set the mood, I'll tell one on myself: some years ago I sent an email (work-related) to someone higher in rank from whom I needed a favor. I knew she had a lot on her plate, as they say at work and at buffets. So I cleverly started it out, "I know you are very busty, but I was wondering if..."

I don't recall her response, but I'll bet she did more than just spell-check it.

Anyway - how about this for an actual web address - it must have made a fine corporate name, but the name that looked just fine on a letterhead suffered a lot from being squeezed together as a dot.com:


Who Represents?, a company where you can check out actors and others who are represented by agents and the like: www.whorepresents.com.
And when Liberty Records pressed several hundred thousand copies of Canned Heat's 45 of "Let's Work Together," some poorly laid-out typography made the title of the song on the flip side, something called "I'M HER MAN," appear to be something called "I'M HERMAN." It should have been a munster hit, but that was not to be.

Verbal slips include Sally Field, the actress once most famous for playing Gidget and then most famous for shrieking, "You like me! You really like me!" upon winning an award, doing the spot for "once-monthly Boniva." Except: listen to the way she says it: "One Smonthly Boniva."

All this came to mind on vacation when we heard what we thought was a commercial for a pizza and sub shop called "Uncle Loogie's." At least, that's the way the announcer kept saying it. Outside of calling your business something even more gross than "Loogie's," I couldn't think of a worse name for a sub shop. So I checked it out. It's Uncle Oogie's. Sounds better that way, does it not?

If you're not too busty, how about some lunch?

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