Thnk* (for Think*, Thank*)

Although all of us think (and therefore all of us are), virtually none of us really understand or completely agree with the ways in which other people think. Three movie quotes that I like speak comically to this conundrum, so I thought I would pass them along. There's George Sanders to Marilyn Monroe in All About Eve ("You've got a point. An idiotic one, but a point"); Frances Dee to William Holden in Meet the Stewarts ("Oh darling, you're so mental-minded"); and one women's prison inmate ("I was just thinking...") to another one ("Quit bragging!") in Caged. Perhaps the most important thing to think of in the word think is the letter I, the very one that's missing from our typo for the day. After all, much of what we "think" is just a matter of opinion, one that may or may not be shared by others. As a bumper sticker I once saw rather ingeniously put it: "Don't believe everything you think." There were eight examples of Thnk* (for Think* or Thank*) in OhioLINK this morning (half of which were actual typos and half of which weren't), and 212 in WorldCat. You can thank me later, if you think of it.

(The Thinker, 1918, by William Orpen, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid