In a post yesterday, I touched on pronunciation, including the pronunciation of “short-lived” and “long-lived” (which take a long “i” – because the words go with the noun “life” rather than the verb “to live”). This provoked a ton of mail, as you can imagine. One man said, “I actually sent Neil Cavuto a thank-you note once for pronouncing ‘short-lived’ correctly on the air.” And I was sort of touched by this letter, from a dad:

Mr. Nordlinger –
The first time I heard my 15-year-old daughter employ the prevailing but wrong pronunciation of “long-lived,” I corrected her. She stared at me, not quite ready to take Dad’s word for it. “But someone who lives long is long-lived,” she argued, repeating the mispronunciation. “No,” I said. “Someone who has a long life is long-lived.” And then a minor inspiration hit me: “Just as someone who has blue eyes is blue-eyed.”
Seeing the light suddenly go on in my daughter’s own blue eyes was one of the most rewarding moments in my career as a parent.

Isn’t that a lovely letter?