Stationary Stationery

I just received a phone call from a man who knows everything there is to know about stationary. He is an expert in all things paper and makes his living selling paper products (i.e. writing paper, envelopes, ink, pens, cards, etc.) at a very cool store in Ottawa (watch for a special feature in an upcoming blog post). I am telling you, this guy knows his stuff. After hearing about TLWR, he checked out the blog.

Although we are planning to meet up in early September to talk about all things paper, I was surprised to get a call from him out of the blue this evening. He had something he wanted to share with me but feared appearing snobbish and hesitated to tell me some very important information. Here it is:

Stationary is actually Stationery........

That's right folks, when referring to paper and envelopes, the correct spelling ends with "ery" as opposed to "ary." Why is this so important? Well, in case you haven't read every single post on this blog, I have likely written this word incorrectly, oh, about 500 times!!!! I depend on my sisters to be the first readers to proofread each new post and even they didn't catch this. Better still, a dear friend who owns a custom invitation/stationery business also didn't know this. In fact, the paper guy estimates that probably 90% of the population spells this word the wrong way when referring to letter writing paper and envelopes. The "other" spelling  with the "ary" refers to something that isn't moving. I suppose then technically, stationery is stationary.......

Now I must embark on the task of reading through every single blog post since June 16th and make these corrections. One of my pet peeves is reading obvious spelling errors and grammatical flaws in blogs (in anything for that matter). I am so grateful that this was brought to my attention and I will now undo 30 years of incorrectly spelling this word and start spelling stationary as stationery.

Here's an easy way to remember:

When something is standing still, it’s stationary. That piece of paper you write a letter on is stationery. Let the “E” in “stationery” remind you of “envelope" or the "ER" in stationery remind you of the "papER."

Watch for a guest post coming soon!