"blonde" may be consciously ambigious, but from a writer like you, who knows words, I saw it as deliberate. Wouldn't blond be sufficiently ambigious, as opposed to the specifically female form "blonde"?

Good grief, did I add an 'e'? Totally invisible to me, and I swear I didn't even see it in Lizard's quote.

Going back to check. My brain's been on wander mode since Saturday (7 hours in high heels and nothing's felt connected since); it ought to have been sans e.

edit: Ha! and realised why I missed it. I'd typoed an 'e: at the end of "blood" and instead of deleting it, my sorry-assed excuse for a brain simply moved it. Thanks, connie. Fixed.

Thank you, deb. Aside from the "rein-reign" thing that hardly anyone ever does correctly in most writing these days--not just fanfic--"blonde" for men is my pet peeve.

Edit: I knew you knew better, which is why it was causing such cognitive dissonance.

Nope, reign-rein is automatic for me. Can't have majored in Euro history without having the various possibilities of the word "reign" (or taken any latin at school, for that matter) burned into even the most tired brain.

But it's a definite wake-up call to have moved that damned e, or actually a pass-out call, as in, sleep deprivation is not my friend.

I know hardly anyone even thinks of horses as anything more than decorative and fun to bet on in races these days, but having so many people not knowing why one "reins in" something, not "reign in", is depressing.

That particular threesome - rain reign rein - were ones we were expected to memorise properly at school. I remember a feisty, sexy little primary school teacher called Miss LeAnza ("call me Rita! I'll tell everyone tales of smoking cigarettes at the movies!") singing a bit of "My Fair Lady" and then choosing a child at random and demanding "Right! WHICH rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane? Spell it!"

And the child had best spell it right.

(yes, my tenses are wandering. I desperately want to sleep but I'm waiting for Nic, and I still need to clean up after Buffydinner....)

I know hardly anyone even thinks of horses as anything more than decorative and fun to bet on in races these days, but having so many people not knowing why one "reins in" something, not "reign in", is depressing.

I will cop to having made that typo (though caught before beta) when writing.

And, well, history geek and major horse geek here. Just sayin'.

Finger/brain disconnects happen.

Yeah, I'd meant the e. Interestingly, also, I noticed you once called a woman a "brunet"-- and the feminine form of that is much more used in English, I think.

("Brunet" *is* masculine, right? I'm not confused?)

"brunet"

Did I? If I did, it would have been either a spelling automatic fix, or because someone called me on it; I have to admit, it's one of those spellings that looks wrong to me, no matter what. Rationally, I know that "ette" is feminine/diminutive, but still. Brunet just looks odd; it's like the word "biped" - my tiny little mind wanted to read that as a verb, not a noun, the past tense of the verb "to bip".

my tiny little mind wanted to read that as a verb, not a noun, the past tense of the verb "to bip".

Oh, that makes me laugh. Reminds me of Normal from Dark Angel. "Bip, bip, bip!"

Brunet just looks odd;

I love this word. It is simply not used enough.