Extract from the Dalmation Diary, Friday 21 May 2004:
I decided to do a search for my name combined with the word ‘dalmation’, just to check that anyone who had replied couldn’t track me down through the world of google. They couldn’t, but my heart sank when I looked at the top of the screen.
Google underlines any words that are to be found on dictionary.com. That is to say any real words. Dalmation wasn’t underlined. Which meant that it wasn’t spelt correctly. My heart sank as I checked on several dictionary websites and Disney’s own 101 Dalmatians website to find that Disney were right. The spotty breed of dog was spelt with an a, not an o.
I didn’t panic. After all, I wasn’t dealing with furry large spotty dogs: I was dealing with small clay spotty dogs. And there was my solution. A Dalmatian is a large furry spotty dog. A dalmation is the small clay descendant of the large furry Dalmatian. All I had done was unwittingly invent a new word to suit the purposes of my project:
