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Sometimes it doesn't matter whether you use language correctly, because people will think you're wrong even when you're not: For example, when we established the Crime and Punishment section of this site, we created a category for tales about criminals whose punishments were meted out in unusual ways. Like so many others before us (particularly operators of bakeries and pastry shops), we played on the desert-dessert pun and called the section Just Desserts. Before long we started receiving mail from readers chiding us for misspelling the phrase just deserts. Eventually we gave up, removed the punning references, and renamed the section to the correctly spelled Just Deserts. Then we began to receive even more mail from readers informing us that we had misspelled the phrase just desserts and providing us with mnemonics to help us remember the difference between desert and dessert: The confusion is understandable, because it involves a little-known word whose correct spelling and pronunciation runs counter to that of two similar and much more commonly used words. The noun desert (accent on the first syllable) is generally used to refer to an arid, barren expanse of land, while the noun dessert (accent on the second syllable) is a sweet course or dish usually served at the end of a meal. However, the word desert, when spelled like the former but pronounced like the latter, also refers to a deserved reward or punishment. Therefore, someone who does wrong and is punished in a suitable manner has received his just deserts. Many people, unfamiliar with the reward or punishment meaning of the word desert, mistakenly assume that the phrase just deserts should be properly spelled as just desserts because of its pronunciation. (The usual reasoning is that a dessert is a type of reward one is given at the end of a meal, so someone who receives suitable rewards or punishments for his actions has gotten his just desserts.) When one gets what one deserves, good or bad, one is getting one's just deserts, accent on the second syllable but spelled like the arid, barren lands.
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