"just one letter away"

[Victor Steinbok]

  And, from the most recent encounters:

http://bit.ly/cS9l7o

I'll leave it a surprise.

     VS-)

On 9/22/2010 1:24 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
> On Sep 22, 2010, at 8:58 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
>> Newsbank has cites going back to 1989.  Cat is 1 letter from Rat; anger
>> is 1 letter from danger; diet is 1 letter away from die; Bob is one
>> letter from boob; HPV is one letter from HIV; etc
> and Graham Rawle produced hundreds of compositions in his "Lost Consonants" series (#772, from 2002: "Pigs have a natural talent for seeking out ruffles"), originally published in British newspapers.
>
> according to Rawle's site ( http://www.grahamrawle.com/lostconsonants/index.html ), the series appeared in the Weekend Guardian for 15 years and in the Sydney Morning Herald and various magazines, and there are 8 books of the things already published.
>
> but as others have pointed out, this kind of orthographic play (with omissions, additions, substitutions, and transpositions) no doubt goes back to the beginnings of literacy.  surely there's a "just one stroke away" variant involving Chinese characters.
>
> arnold, not that i don't enjoy the genre
>
>

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