During a writing workshop we conducted in Washington D.C. last week, we mentioned the fact that people can get very emotional about their language—even about points of usage that many of us consider unimportant.

One woman told about a problem in her office, where people had formed two opposing camps over a disagreement about the spelling of a word. It wasn’t a trivial matter to them—they had serious arguments—ongoing and heated. “One man,” she said, “was so angry he was nearly in tears.”

So, what was the word? It was gauge, or gage, depending. When I asked the workshop participants how they might have handled the situation, one man (intelligent, good writer) said, “Tell them to just shut up and get back to work.”

Well, that’s one way to do it. We’ll give you our ideas about it next week, but in the meantime, let us know what you think. Tell us what you might have done—before, during, or after the problem came up. Give us your opinion on the spelling, or anything else you’d like to say on this topic of disagreements about usage.

We’ll try to ga—um, consider—your ideas before adding ours.