I do not think these words mean what you think they mean...

Today in the mail, my wife received a letter marked "Personal & Confidential" from someone named Christopher Kimball. Now, some people might be concerned about their wives receiving personal, confidential mail from another man, but as Mr. Kimball wrote on behalf of Cook's Illustrated, I'm not all that worried.

Baffled is more like it. What about a letter addressed "Dear Home Cook," exactly, is "personal"? Maybe in Newspeak a form letter counts as personal, but I'm still reading and writing in English. And "confidential"? Somehow I doubt that the suggestion to use some vodka in a pie crust or to avoid poaching salmon, much less how to know your skillet is preheated or the key to a good marinade are state secrets that Russians or terrorists are dying to get their hands on--so what's confidential about anything arriving in this envelope?

We've got a perfectly good language here--would it kill people in advertising departments to learn how to use it?

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