LIGHTER SIDE OF BUSINESS
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Even newspapers are not immune from linguistic glitches, as noted by longtime PR and marketing specialist Robert Clay.
Seems that we have unthinkingly picked up a term coined by the real estate industry by referring in stories about Orange County’s soaring housing prices to the sale of “existing” homes.
Clay recently issued a mock press release touting the stability of the market for “non-existing” homes. In it, he wonders why used dwellings--those being sold by their first or second or 10th owners--are called existing homes. “It always struck us,” he wrote, “that all homes--be they new or used--did, in fact exist.”
They did. And they do. And we shouldn’t.
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