The potential mystery of confederate gray

2008-07-09T14:12:56+00:00

In yesterday’s post on the spelling of ‘grey’ (even I can’t believe the things I talk about sometimes) I was going to mention how I finally cemented that ‘gray’ was the US spelling only by calling to mind the wrapper on my Crayola confederate gray crayon.

I searched for a picture of this crayon, thinking that, such is the capacity of the internet for nostalgia and even indignation over necessary change that there was a chance someone would have snapped a picture of a surviving crayon. Behold, I could find no picture, and almost no mention of the thing (and the comments at the free republic aren’t the most reliable source.) Finally I looked at the Crayola history of crayon colors and discovered it was not listed. Other changes, like the change of Indian red (after a colorful soil in India) to chestnut? Yes. “Flesh” to “peach”? Certainly. But the axing of confederate gray? Nowhere to be found. Wikipedia, where lost information goes to find itself, does not mention it either.

Now, I suppose one could impugn the honesty of the Crayola company, but I find it hard to imagine that they would be more ashamed of having ‘confederate’ on a pretty genuinely confederate-uniform-colored crayon than of thinking all skin was peach-colored. Was there ever a “confederate gray” crayon? I had hazy memories of it being canceled amid a contest to name new colors. I’m sure the contest happened, but is this just the mutability of memory? Is “confederate gray” an urban myth that attached itself to my strangely capacious Crayola memory space?

Does anyone else remember this crayon?

grey and gray

2008-07-08T11:27:48+00:00

In my third semester in the MFA, I got a marginal note from my advisor: “grey is Engl. spelling – gray is U.S. spelling”. On the next page, he circled ‘gray’ (pushing consistency), and by the end of that semester I had added “find/replace grey” to the list of final touches I must put on a story before sending it out.

I actually remember having trouble with this as a child. We largely learn to spell by reading, or at least I did, and massive numbers of the books I read as a child were British. I remember being admonished for writing ‘colour’ and ‘flavour’ as a first- or second-grader, and my indignation at the unfairness. It was in books! How could it be wrong if it was spelled that way in books? But some variations between British and American English are further under the radar than ‘glamour’ and ‘theatre’. Enforcement of ‘gray’ was not widespread, and I wasn’t sure which I should use. I remember misspelling my grandmother’s name as ‘Vey’ instead of ‘Vay’ – I don’t think my parents realized it, but that was because of ‘grey’.

Now that I realize the distinction, it’s interesting to see that, while I obviously prefer ‘grey’, I use both. Search finds 69 non-Grey City hits for ‘grey’, 31 non-name hits for ‘gray’ just on this site. Heck, I even spell Marvel Girl’s secret identity both ways. I’m hemorrhaging geek-cred while we speak. At any rate, I think I use the word ‘grey’ for more subtle or numinous hues and connotations, whereas I reach for the American ‘gray’ for flatter, darker tones. Zombies are gray. Skies over oceans are grey. No wonder I’ve been using the latter extensively in my thesis. One wonders what other linguistic quirks I will discover in myself as I turn a disciplined eye to my writing!

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The potential mystery of confederate gray

grey and gray