It's e-Zeen People

A lot of my articles deal with weighty matters such as the Federal Reserve scam, stinkin' politicians, stinkin' racism etc. So I thought I would "lighten up" a little.

I know it's of no great import, you say tom-A-to, I say to-MAH-to, but can't we all agree that the term "ezine" is mispronounced more than the president of Iran's name?

One can't count how many times you hear someone pronounce the word making it rhyme with "e-vine." This is incorrect and my English teacher would have pointed out that fact and corrected me. And I would have thanked her for it.

I don't think anyone should be brought up on charges for this grammatical transgression, but I wonder sometimes at the lack of insight and intuitiveness on the part of those who misuse the term every single time.

The really incredible thing is that many who commit this faux pas are recognized Internet marketing gurus who are fairly well-off financially speaking. No serious indictment there when you consider that you can be POTUS without any real command of the English language.

But some things are so obvious that it's mind-blogging that so many fail to see it.

Even if you control for the people who may suffer from dyslexia, as even some presidents do, there are still far too many who can't use that as a reasonable excuse for not understanding the intrinsic symbolism in the very spelling of the word itself.

Surely no one will can ever speak flawlessly each and every time they open their mouth to say something, but continued mispronunciation of any word is a dead giveaway that the speaker doesn't know they are actually misusing it.

I remember a few years ago hearing a commercial for The Home Depot on a local radio station . It was a live spot and the person voicing the commercial repeatedly mispronounced the word depot. It was sad to hear him continue to say "The Home DepoT", actually enunciating the letter "t."

He wasn't at the station too long after that. I guess he got "de-poted."

And you have to wonder had he ever watched a Home Depot commercial on TV. Or did he, while arranging to do the commercial not hear someone else use the term correctly. Or if he did, did he just think they were mistaken and decided he would do it correctly.

Likewise with the abusers of "ezine." Haven't they ever heard someone else use the word differently from the way they use it? And if they did why wouldn't they ask themselves why that was so?

So for the record folks the "zine" part of the word "ezine" does not rhyme with "vine." The word itself is short for e-lectronic maga-ZINE. An online magaZine OK.

Glad we got that out of the way.