Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I see a semantic difference between notify and notice.  If I tell yous sister to tell you something, and she does, what I have done is to notify you.  If I serve you with a written document, i have noticed you.  In some situations, giving someone written notice has legal consequences.

I was trying to decide whether the reporter was a dud, or if that was the term actually used in the meerting.  I decided it was the latter.

The power company owns an easement ewhere their lines go, and if you plant trees that trespass on the easement, you don't have  a foot to stand on if you don't like the way the power company trims them.  As a rule, the power company tries to be accommodating in the name of customer relations.

The summer I got out of high school, I worked for the electric coop.  We had to drive the bucket truck through wet back yards in order to add a transformer to a pole where someone was building an all-electric home.  One of the homeowners came out, sorely aggrieved about the deep and wide ruts the truck had made.

Sandy listened and sympathized with the homeowner, and said, "You know, we have an easement for the rearmost ten feet of your lot, but you've built a shed there.  By rights, we should have demolished the shed so we can get through on our easement, but we figured you'd prefer the ruts here.  Now, we have to get the truck out when we're done.  Do you want another set of ruts here as we exit, or should we knock over the shed?"  The homeowner allowed as how the ruts weren't all that bad.

So given that the government officials were ignorant of easements, I'm betting they are illiterate as well.  (In Ohio public schools, they refer to those with teaching certificates as "certificated", not "certified."  You know, according to Mark Twain, God created jackasses for practice before he created school boards.)