In a Dilemma

Or is it a "dilemna"? As I opened one birthday present to find the book “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”, we had an interesting discussion about punctuation, spelling, and grammar.

From the back of the book:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

Then the friend who knows my penchant for punctuation and grammar so well and who gave me the book brought up the word “dilemma”. She (coming from New York) had learned to spell it “dilemna”, as had a person from Chicago and my husband from Detroit. Whereas someone from Ohio had learned the double-m spelling and another person didn’t remember how he had learned it. We didn’t even use the word in northern Florida, where I grew up, preferring instead to just be “in a fix”.

The gift-giving friend is a champion speller and recently found it curious that she couldn’t find a single current resource that agreed with her spelling of the word. She must not be the only one in this dilemma.

Punctuation, spelling, and grammar are enough to drive anyone crazy. It’s hard to find any two people who agree down the line on all of these. We appease ourselves by saying the goal is communication, not perfection. But there are those of us who will continue to notice and pass judgment. I can’t wait to explore this book, which promises to be a great read, poking fun at “correct usage”.

And how do you spell that d___ word?