Whats the meaning of A Spoonful of Sugar?

You may be wondering if there’s a difference between a spoonful of sugar or a spoon full of sugar. The same applies to roomful, forkful, and numerous other words. And the answer is yes!

A roomful of people is a measurement, albeit an imprecise one. It’s how many people it takes to fill a room (hence the imprecise nature–it could vary based upon the room). But still, it’s a number of people. When referring to spoonfuls, forkfuls, stadiumfuls, boatfuls, etc., the same applies. It’s the amount or number required to fill the container.

A room full of people, on the other hand, is literally a room that is full of people. The same applies to a spoon full of sugar, a fork that is full of pasta, etc.

While the meanings of the two phrases are similar, they are also subtly different and worth considering as you edit.

As always, feel free to ask me if you have any questions, and I hope this helps.

Happy writing!

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

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In the movie Mary Poppins, the children hear their magical governess sing that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” as she whisks about, using her powers to clean up the untidy nursery. The message of this song is that “in every job that must be done there is an element of fun” and all one has to do to enjoy work is find that element. There is a double meaning to this message. On the one hand, the spoonful of sugar provides the extra sweetness needed to transform an unpleasant task to “a piece of cake.” On the other hand, once that “element of fun” is discovered, the task activity itself becomes rewarding, and even as mundane an activity as cleaning up one’s room can become enjoyable. This principle of having an intrinsic motivation replace an extrinsic one is used extensively in behavior modification, particularly as applied with children. The goal is to have the learner become more motivated by the intrinsic features of the desired behavior (such as keeping “on task” in school) so that extrinsic rewards (tokens or candy) used initially to reinforce the desired behaviors can be phased out eventually.

Keywords

• Extrinsic Factor
• Work Task
• Monetary Reward
• Extrinsic Reward
• Intrinsic Reason

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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