Spot quiz: Is the American holiday in February:

a) President’s Day

b) Presidents’ Day

c) Presidents Day?

So far, the answer is (d), all of the above. I’m editing a client’s calendar, which includes reference to both Canadian and American holidays. I double-checked this item because I’ve seen all three versions. It’s not in my Canadian Press Stylebook or my Canadian dictionaries. A search turns up every variation, but since it honours both Washington and Lincoln, it makes sense that it would be plural, “Presidents’.” So I turned to the place I thought would be the definitive source of the correct usage, the official U.S. federal government web site. It shows all three in various sections of the site.

I’ve e-mailed a request for clarification and the “USA.gov Citizen Response Team” (whose goal is “to make it easy for you to communicate with the government”) promises me a response within two days. I wonder if it will prompt the team to review the web site?

UPDATE: You’ll laugh (or maybe cry): Here’s the not-quite-definitive answer from the USA.gov Citizen Response Team:

“We have received your inquiry concerning which is the correct phrasing to refer to Presidents’ Day. The phrasing “Presidents’ Day” and “President’s Day” are both used and are both correct (depending on how it is used). We hope you find this information helpful.”

Umm, not really! There were no helpful suggestions as to which use would be appropriate in which instance. Frankly, I think they should pick one, run with it, be consistent. Don’t you think?

I’ve often heard about “Black Friday,” the day after American Thanksgiving, when shoppers are out in full force heralding the official start of the traditional Christmas shopping marathon. I wasn’t sure where the name came from, imagining it referred to shoppers’ elbows as they made their way through the crowd, or perhaps other shoppers’ eyes from said elbows. No, according to good ol’ Wikipedia:

“It was originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day, although most contemporary uses of the term refer instead to it as the beginning of the period in which retailers are in the black (i.e., turning a profit).”

This is also “Buy Nothing Day,” held deliberately on the big shopping day “as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption.” I’m observing Buy Nothing Day myself, but it may have more to do with the fact that I don’t have the day off, plus Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and other big name U.S. retailers don’t have a presence in my neighbourhood. Noticing that it’s only one week until December has me thinking about Christmas shopping, and tomorrow might just happen to be Buy Something Day. Which are you observing?

P.S. While I had been idly wondering where the term “Black Friday” came from, it was a post about Buy Nothing Day from Andrew Careaga’s blog on marketing and PR (pointed out by Judy Gombita) that prompted me to look into it. I lost track of whose blog started it or I would have mentioned it in the original post. Thanks to both!

I’m not a big television watcher and have few “must-see” programs, although for a while Monday nights were consumed with high intensity: Prison Break, 24 and Heroes. But I confess if there are no males claiming the TV remote (a rare event), I find myself drawn to those home and personal makeover shows. The latest such guilty pleasure: How to Look Good Naked, airing Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on W.

What’s so unusual about this show isn’t the startling amount of nudity. Given the number of scantily clad women on TV, in advertising, magazines and just about everywhere else, that in itself isn’t unusual. No, what’s unusual about this show is the women aren’t the airbrushed perfection television viewers have come to expect. These women are REAL, with big thighs and solid rears and what they call “wobbly bits.” You know, what real women see when they look in a mirror.

What’s also appealing about the show is that there’s no cosmetic surgery or out-of-reach dental improvements. The show is all about self-confidence. The women featured start off hiding their bodies in big, baggy clothes, their confidence scraping the floor. The stylist helps them get over their fixation on the wobbly bits by showing how the right style of clothes will make the most of their natural shape. It’s good fun and of course everyone lives happily ever after, don’t they?

Companies are always looking at print publications with a critical eye, and wondering why they don’t just put the newsletter online and save money. There are plenty of reasons (studies show people retain more after reading print vs. online; it’s harder to read online; not everyone has access to computers on the job) and measurement guru Angela Sinickas provides excellent ammunition in a Melcrum article on “The real cost of killing print.”

I especially liked her comment on what you could say to executives anxious to wield the axe: “…that you’d be happy to reconsider your point of view when all the business newspapers and magazines read avidly by Finance and IT executives eliminate their printed versions.” I don’t see it happening soon.

I didn’t know until catching up on my Bloglines feeds and reading Dan Santow’s Word Wise that the 2007 word of the year (named by Webster New World College Dictionary) is grass station. A variation on gas station, it refers to where we may all be fuelling our hybrid cars in the not-too-distant future, although Canadians are more likely to find corn (ethanol) than grass in our gasoline.

Maybe this is one of those Canadian/American differences, but I had never heard this term. Supposedly, it’s so hot that it has already appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times. (I didn’t realize that this was the pinnacle of heat either!)

Don’t you think last year’s word of the year (crackberry, reflecting the additive quality of Canadian firm Research in Motion’s BlackBerry) was a much more appropriate choice?

Oh, those jokers at Sympatico. Today they breathlessly advised me (in a message sent three times) that they have “enhanced” my e-mail service and added “new, complimentary features.”

The first new feature was that I couldn’t access my mail until I changed my password. Sympatico offered links to help members “configure” their e-mail, assuming of course that we all use Microsoft products. I don’t. The link I got (for “other”) might as well have told me I was on my own. Fortunately, it seems that Eudora is handling the change on its own but I’ll have to get through today to know for sure.

One of my other new features is an “enhanced junk mail filter,” which in the same e-mail delivery as the three Sympatico messages let through three Viagra spams. The next delivery had eight spam messages. So much for that enhancement.

Is this for real? I just found the Free Rice site (through Seth Godin) that has a word game that promises to donate 10 grains of rice through the UN every time you correctly pick the right meaning of a word. It’s an admirable mission, although I wonder just who is counting out those grains of rice. The site says it has donated 1,712,371,750 grains since it began on Oct. 7.

The site claims playing the game will help us “formulate ideas better and speak more precisely and persuasively,” but I’m not so sure. The words are pretty obscure and not likely to be seen in ordinary speech, unless of course you’re talking with Conrad Black, lover of grandiose words. For instance, I made it up to 280 grains before I was felled by “imaret,” not found in my dictionary but said to mean “inn.” There was also “gammon” (ham), “hebetude” (stupidity) and “perspicuous” (lucid). When you get three words in a row wrong, you go to an easier level; three right, you go to a harder level. It’s actually fairly addictive.

It reminded me of the breast cancer site, where you click to donate a free mammogram to women in the U.S. The site began in 2000, and since then, busy clickers (and shoppers of the convenient store) have funded more than 11,000 mammograms.

There’s a new category of scams making the rounds (well, it was new to me): hostile messages supposedly from an eBay buyer saying things like “I want my money back because I did not received (sic) my item until now. I will report you to eBay as fraud if you will not respond.”

A major clue is that the item mentioned is nothing you have ever heard of, but I have to admit, the messages look very authentic, right down to the “marketplace safety tip” they include about not responding to e-mails! Of course, they aren’t real. If you get one, forward it (without changing the header or adding any comment) to spoof@ebay.com, where the fetchingly named eBay SafeHarbor Investigations Team will take over.

I’ve mentioned before having friends (not in the communications business) who are less than aware of blogging, podcasting, Second Life, etc., but what if you ARE in the business? As Toronto-based WaterCooler Inc. asks in “The ABCs of RSS,” what if you don’t educate yourself on a trend quite early? “It becomes almost unmentionable to admit you haven’t mastered it.” Not to mention embarrassing!

Understanding that “it can be difficult to stay abreast of and completely comprehend emerging communication tools,” WaterCooler shares a great explanation of RSS that starts out with this simple statement of its purpose:

“In a nutshell, RSS can be used to dramatically simplify the searching and scrounging involved in staying aware of specific trends and topics.”

(Thanks to Judy Gombita for the link.)

You know technology has truly infiltrated our lives when tech terms apply to people. A client recently asked what my bandwidth was. It used to mean how much data could be sent through a network or modem, but now it’s evolved to mean “how much extra time do you have to take on new projects?” In marketing-speak, a customer’s acceptance bandwidth means the amount of time he/she will invest in your marketing message.

The November/December issue of IABC’s Communication World introduced me to sock puppetry, which refers to commenting on blogs using a fake identity.

Buzzwhack is always good for current buzzwords. How about Friendquest, which means asking someone to be a friend or buddy on an online social network. The site also has an IMglish Dictionary, keeping you up to speed on the meaning of all those instant messaging/texting abbreviations. The one that made me LOL: HUB (head up butt).