Grammar Police Where Are You?

Dear Grammar Police,

I would like to entreat you to accost those who list handwork out of alphabetical order. You have no problem letting me know when spell check has missed my homonyms, or typos, or my over use of commas, and semi-colons. You, the Grammar Police, love to point out incomplete phrases, and run on sentences, you have skills, and I wish you to put them to good use. You can correct me any time you want, and often do, but why oh why don't you get a hold of yarn companies, and catalogues for writing "Knit and Crochet" instead of "Crochet and Knit" ?

A list should be in alphabetical order: point blank.

Now, here are my reasons: I recently contacted a yarn company regarding their use of "Knit and Crochet" and politely asked them to revise their website to reflect the alphabetical listing. I wrote stating that it was obviously an oversight, because they have not ignored crochet as a market, but that we (the consumers) often feel like we're getting second billing.

Their response was less than desired; I felt talked down to, I felt like was I was patted on the head, and frankly I was really annoyed.

To paraphrase what they wrote me; they use knit and crochet because of how the phrase flows.

Hmmm... I had years of voice lessons, classical voice lessons; if you've ever studied classical voice then you will understand that learning to enunciate while singing is a skill that requires years of practice. In fact, "electrocution" (elocution) lessons were a great part of my classical training. Did you know it's easier to sing in a Latin root language than in English? Did you know why?

Vowels and consonants. Sound is carried on vowel sounds, and soft consonants (m, n, s,z), hard consonants end sound, (t, p,k,d)...So I want you to pronounce with me...let's say this together phonetically, and if you think I'm wrong, that's okay. I just think if they are going to say it's a word flow issue, we should test it out :)

NihT anD croshay

Croshay and nihT

Which has the smoother flow?

See I find when I pronounce the "t" in knit that the t is a hard sound which breaks up the flow of the sounds in the phrase. When I say crochet (ay) this flows with more liquidity with two consecutive open vowel sounds and you'll find you may pronounce the d of "and" softer too, with the t at the end of knit softer but still final. T is always a final sound when you pronounce words in English; It's a hard, staccato, versus and open legato... :)

So next time someone says, it's for the flow of the sounds and not about billing, I'll just have to point out how very wrong that is....

You can fool part of the people, part of the time; but you can't fool all the people, all of the time.

I think saying crochet and knit sounds more equal and less of a billing issue than vice versa...not because of the alphabet even, because of how the word sounds flow.

But pronounce it yourself and see what you think for yourself.