A Word Please
by June Casagrande

June Casagrande

This just in: A Southern California man has just lifted a half ton of crates and carried them across a warehouse -- in his mouth. Not far away, a certain stage show has been deemed so dazzling that it made one reviewer feel as if she were struck by the process of fading. In the Catalina area, a tourist has learned how to propel himself forward on a bicycle through the sheer power of salesmanship. And in Beverly Hills, a room in a certain home is so crammed with furniture that its fullness can be described with reference to dusty form of limestone.

Welcome to News of the Jeered, a new segment in which we make fun of other people's mistakes even though they don't deserve it. The reason the authors of these accidental news items don't deserve this mockery is that their mistakes are very understandable and very common. I've made some of them myself. But, in my never-ending quest to turn language learning into cheap edutainment, I'm willing to set aside such questions of fairness. As such, I offer you, the reader, an edutaining glimpse into some common mistakes by professional writers.

Our first news item, the muscle-mouthed man, is the result of the all-too-common confusion about the homonyms "palate," "palette" and "pallet." It appeared in an article I was editing that reported that a warehouse worker moved some crates using "palates." A palate, of course, means the roof of the mouth or the sense of taste. And that second definition has an interesting origin: "The palate was incorrectly thought to be the organ of taste," according to "Webster's New World College Dictionary."

"Palette" is a prettier-looking word, don't you think? And that fact can help you remember that it's the one you usually want when writing about art or design. You decorate a room using a specific color palette -- which is derived from the word's main definition: "a thin board or tablet of wood, plastic, etc., often with a hole for the thumb at one end, on which an artist arranges and mixes paints."

The word our writer wanted, and that appeared in the published article, was "pallet": "a low, portable platform, usually double-faced, on which materials are stacked for storage or transportation, as in a warehouse." It's also, "Webster's" tells us, "a wooden tool consisting of a flat blade with a handle; esp., such a tool used by potters for smoothing and rounding." And, just to muddy the waters, "Webster's" also says that "pallet" can share one definition with "palette" -- that of a wooden artist's board. But that's not preferred.

Our second news item, the stage show that's so dazzling it's fading, is based on a mistake I came across recently but that also evokes some very old pangs from a time, years ago, when I was busted making the same mistake. It was back when I was trying to think of myself as a professional writer that an editor pointed out to me that something is struck by "lightning," not "lightening." I was sure I'd been exposed as a fraud. Now I know that being a professional writer doesn't mean being perfect. It just means being paid, which I never was by that particular publication -- perhaps because I was still too green to know I was supposed to send them an invoice.

Being a professional writer also means knowing how to leave your readers wanting more.

So if you're eager to know how a bicycle can be powered by salesmanship, if you're dying to learn about a room's bizarre similarity to dusty limestone, and if you're eager to see just how low I'll go making fun of people in order to make language amusing, tune in next week for more News of the Jeered.

-- June Casagrande is author of "Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You're Right." She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.