Stationary vs. Stationery

I have blogged about my peevishness over the conflation of these two words before. I have often vowed, with rare irresistible exceptions, not to purchase from vendors who don't know how to spell their own stock.

But now I see the search results on etsy, and I wonder if I need to mistakenly tag my items with "stationary." I think more people search for "stationary" than "stationery." ARRRRGH!!

I mean, is a postcard really meant to be stationary? I think it's meant to fly...

Apologies for the late-night rant. I think I won't respect myself in the morning if I cave. Persnickety grammarians will agree, and the rest of you will probably think we're just fuddy-duddies. Ah well. Perhaps we are.

My stationery is not stationary swap envelope

Way back in July, I participated in a wonderful Swap-bot swap called My Stationery is not Stationary, hosted by the lovely PostMuse. She sweetened the deal with a giveaway on her blog, too.

I knew any swap she hosted was going to be well-organized, and it sounded great, so I participated with glee. Above you see the envelope I decorated for the swap,



...plus a little glitter-pen embellishment to the deco tape. The recipient liked birds, so I used a bird theme for the stationery and used more birds on the envelope.

I miss the summertime, when I had time to decorate envelopes like that...

PostMuse later did a summary of the swap, with her wonderful follow-up, if you're looking to read more about it.

It was one of the best swaps I've participated in - thoroughly enjoyed it.

Homophone peeve

I've almost posted about this a million times, and this morning I'm just going to fire it off: the misuse of stationary absolutely drives me batty!

I know, it's one little letter, but I just gotta say it.

stationery
   /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛri/ [stey-shuh-ner-ee]
–noun
1. writing paper.
2. writing materials, as pens, pencils, paper, and envelopes.


stationary
   /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛri/ [stey-shuh-ner-ee]
–adjective
1. standing still; not moving.
2. having a fixed position; not movable.
3. established in one place; not itinerant or migratory.
4. remaining in the same condition or state; not changing: "The market price has remained stationary for a week."

(Definitions and pronunciations courtesy of dictionary.com)

Here's a fun pun:
"No matter how you push the envelope, it's still stationery."
But maybe that is even more confusing for some people.

OK, that's my rant for the day... I'll leave you on a positive note, related to this homophone peeve: PostMuse is doing a very fun giveaway of a tote bag with both of these words defined.

Update: Thanks to reader JP in CA for pointing out this fun post on the Crane blog. True 'nuff, people in the business should know how to spell their own product!