Ishani's Pen

How many times have we been told by our teachers or parents to speak correctly? And every time they remind us of this, have we really paid heed to it? It is actually a very important practice to speak “correctly” – to use the correct words/phrases to refer to anything in a sentence. It might appear a little confusing now, so let’s see a small example here to understand this concept for clearly. Back in my PhD days in IIT Guwahati, I asked one of my seniors, “Will you have a chocolate?” When she replied in affirmative, I handed her a “Pulse chocolate”. She looked at me, flabbergasted, and said, “This is not a chocolate! It’s a candy! I don’t want this. I thought you meant chocolate – I really needed one now.” And she walked away. I stood there in bewilderment – I did give her “chocolate”. Why didn’t she take it if she needed one? But it was that small incident that taught me the importance of using the “correct” word. A google search made me understand a fact that we probably always ign...