Inflection

Let me tell you a personal story about the importance of inflection.  When we were young and my parents were divorced,  I lived with Mom and my brother lived with Dad.  At Christmas time, Mom would return my brother's Christmas gifts.  He lamented this many times.  Moving forward from childhood, years later my brother and I had a falling out and he hung my Christmas gifts to him on my door knob.  I found them as I returned from Church on Christmas Eve.   I sent him a message--here's where inflection is so important--inclucing the phrase, "I thought it was wrong to return Christmas gifts."  I ment for the emphasis to be on the word wrong; I thought it was wrong to return Christmas gifts.  But, he and many others read it and read the emphasis on I.  I thought it was wrong to return Christmas gifts.   So, to put a wedge between Mom and I, he forwarded the message to her.  I didn't know this at first.  Not until she started beating around the bush in a lame attempt to apologise for the mistakes of her parenthood and I connected the dots.  Anyway,  inflection,  important. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android