Something, perhaps a combination of ignorance and arrogance, prevented this allegedly educated man from bothering to check on meaning of this new word. It was, therefore, paraded about for all to admire. The use of new favourite word escalated until no document was considered complete without it.

I was horrified and embarrassed. I squirmed, anticipating day when another (better educated) lawyer or a client would broach subject of this inappropriate word. Fortunately, I moved on before day arrived and hope that my association with this word abuser has been forgotten.

A very public example of this kind of thing occurred to Georgie Fame who was a song writer and singer (and still is) in 1960’s. Georgie Fame and his band, The Blue Flames, were very popular and, when they released a record, it was played all time everywhere. This song was about bank-robbing duo, Bonnie and Clyde, and included a verse about them stuffing their loot into a canvas bag. Unfortunately, when Georgie Fame wrote words to song, he got a word wrong. Instead of referring to a "burlap" bag, he used word "dewlap". (In case you don’t know, dewlap is loose hanging bit of skin under throat of oxen, dogs, turkeys, etc ( you know bit I mean.) I couldn’t listen to that song without picturing villains stuffing bank notes into a cow’s mouth and that definitely ruined dramatic impact for me.

This error did not go unnoticed by rest of world. Georgie Fame admitted in an interview that somebody had told him, before song was recorded, that "dewlap" was not right word but he brushed them off and didn’t bother to check. Once song had been recorded and released, it was too late to do anything about it. This failure to check (even after a warning) became about as public as a mistake can be. If nothing else, it proved that people do notice these things.

I don’t know exactly why dictionaries went out of fashion but I’d bet money that it was due to pressure by "don’t be shackled by correctness, creativity is all that counts" brigade. I never understood why you can’t be correct and creative at same time but I’ll stay at bottom of trench until that argument is over. My suggestion is that you become a closet dictionary user. It’s still legal and completely harmless. If you fear discovery, you can cover your dictionary in brown paper or pretend you just keep it to prop door open, or say it was a present from Granny. Whatever you do, use dictionary if in doubt. If idea of owning an actual paper dictionary makes you too nervous, you can find one online at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/. Never take a chance and assume you know meaning of a word just from context in which you heard it used.

In case of home business, I am always wary of pre-launch hype from marketers I have never heard of. If they don’t have a name in business, how do I know their product will be any good? It could just be a way to get information, get you to download something, etc., rather than introduction of a real, quality product. Pre-launch marketing does get used by reputable marketers too, but not very often. After all, if you’re offering a quality product do you really need to get people excited about it before they can see it. It might be fun, but not all that necessary. Pre-launch hype also has a way of annoying potential customers, as they wade through months of excessive advertising and spam about product. It generally makes much more sense for a company to launch a product when ready, rather than give a buyer time to change his or her mind because they’re tired of hype.

There is no guarantee, however, that a given opportunity is a scam just because it looks like one. It is possible to misjudge, but you have to decide if you would rather miss an opportunity that could hurt you financially or destroy your reputation if it is a scam than take a chance on it. If too many warning flags go up, it is probably not worth it in my opinion, but you have to decide for yourself.