Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The snowman

Andy has a new favorite book - the Snowman by Raymond Briggs. The story isn't that great (frankly, most of these have really short, lame stories), but the flaps and pictures are very interesting for him.

The marketing part of the book is what really gets me "Over 35 flaps inside." Can't they just say it has 37 flaps or whatever? Why try to make it sound more grand? Do people really decide not to buy if it's got 36 flaps, but if they see the over 35 then they won't? Of course, what's really at issue is the use of "over" rather than "more than." My mother always said, if you can count it, it's more than or fewer than, if you can't, it's over or less than. I got this lesson every time we went to the grocery store and they had the short line. Some of the newer grocery stores use proper grammer and I always consider it a moral victory for Mom.

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