I am going to give you a headline, and let’s see how you read it at first sight:
Teacher’s plea deal for sex with boy rejected
Hmm. A teacher whose plea deal was to have sex with a boy was rejected. Obviously. Wouldn’t community service or something be more appropriate? Oh, the plea deal for the teacher who was convicted of having sex with a boy was rejected. Ah, I see. That’s a little different.
I would be remiss if I did not provide a link to the article with this headline. It turns out the online headline is different. The headline I quoted above was from CNN’s RSS feed. It was enough to draw me in. Maybe that was the point.
Maybe the world’s first edible Nobel Prize!
The technical literature is full of jargon. It makes people feel smart, special even. The phrase “email for pics” is an example of a specific jargon used by those engaged in online sales. Today, I had the good fortune to see two worlds meet, as an article about revamping one’s website had to introduce the definition of the word “bling”.
Elinor Mills at CNet wrote an article titled “Bring some ‘bling’ to your Web site”, in which some techniques were discussed for making sales-oriented websites more search engine and consumer friendly. Just in case the audience didn’t know what “bling” meant, a suitable definition was provided:
Bling bling is a hip-hop slang term that refers to flashiness or luxury goods.
Priceless. Some words and phrases are simply not meant to be defined in print.