vitally important calendar poll

[topaz]

Suppose that today is Wednesday, March 1st.

A friend proposes an event for "next Sunday."

[Poll #440001]

Comments

[psongster.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the poll. I too found the almost-even results interesting.

I was caught by this issue just last week. A notice in the Thursday (local, weekly) town paper said an event would be "next Friday." So I showed up eight days after the publication date -- only to be told the event had been the day after the publication date. Since when is "next Friday" a synonym for "tomorrow"?

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Maybe, if the notice was submitted on Monday, the wording made sense at the time to the author and they hadn't considered that it would read differently on the day of publication?

[psongster.livejournal.com]

Yes -- that's my assumption. But it just reinforces your point that this particular aspect of the English language doesn't work well!