There’s a question that’s been burning in the unscrubbed corners of my mind for a long time. We are told that Ivory soap is “99 and 44/100% pure.” What’s in the other 56/100% (or 0.56% if you prefer)? –Peter Holland, Chicago
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Trouble was, there wasn’t a standard for purity in soap, so Harley hired an independent scientific consultant in New York to concoct one. The consultant concluded that a 100 percent pure soap would consist of nothing but fatty acids and alkali, the somewhat yucky sounding substances that nonetheless are the chief ingredients of most soap.
We got several letters about the Scotch-Scottish thing. According to my dictionary, Scottish was the original term, while Scotch was a later English contraction used by, among others, the poet Robert Burns. Anglophobic Scots now argue that Scotch ought to be expunged from the language, or at least applied only to whisky (as distinct from whiskey, the latter referring generically to distilled spirits while whisky means stuff made in Scotland). But the battle is far from won usagewise and I for one regard the distinction as pointless. That said, I am always sympathetic to the efforts of a fellow nitpicker and propose a deal: I will zealously enforce the distinction between Scotch and Scottish if you do likewise for my favorite word pair, namely “while” and “whilst.” The difference, I’m sure you’ll agree, is subtle yet profound.
