Through 2006 and 2013 I became obsessed with a tv show called Dexter. The show told the story of a blood spatter analysis at the Miami police department who moonlighted as a serial killer. I know it was a wild premise and a wild tv show, great acting and writing had me come back every week. In one episode a group of bad guys are looking at Dexters ID and one bad guys mentions that Dexter is a blood splatter analysis expert. The man in charge corrects the henchman and tells him it is spatter not splatter.
The difference between spatter and splatter is a matter of degree. To spatter means to scatter small particles of a substance. To splatter means to scatter large particles of a substance. See? Just an matter of degrees separates the two words, but degrees matter.
It is attention to detail that may have been one of the reasons that the man explaining what they call Deters profession made this man a bad guy boss and not a mere henchman. It can be easy to make situations simple however we miss so much when we do this. Life is complicated nuanced and there is often beauty found in small degrees. Let’s not sell ourselves or others short today by skipping over the nuances or using the wrong words to describe the profession of parttime serial killers.
(and it is not lost on me that this post dealing with the importance of semantics, particulars and details is in fact quite succinct).
The Corrigan Encore 