I in Team
I in Team
[Hairy and Cueball stand opposite each other.] Hairy: Remember, there's no "I" in "team". Cueball: No, but there's a "U" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning".

"There's no I in team" is a well-known saying that tries to encourage teamwork by reducing each member's individual self-importance. The intention of the phrase is to remind team members that, just as the letter "i" is not present in the word "team", focus on the metaphorical "I" (i.e. individual self-interest) is not constructive in teamwork. It can be used as a light reprimand to a team member who isn't cooperating, with the reminder that when working as a team one cannot think only for oneself, and must work in partnership with the rest of the team towards a common goal.
The phrase "no I in team" dates from the 1960s in the USA with printed references [1] showing it is familiar to baseball pitchers such as Vern Law . As an aside, it's interesting that it seems to come from baseball, a sport where players have significantly more independence compared to, say, rugby .
Interestingly, the letters M and E can both be found in "team." This suggests that the phrase "There's no I in team" was a slight victim of cherry picking . This comic makes fun of this, and uses an extreme example, by Cueball taking the sentence literally, as a metalingual comment (see Jakobson's functions of language ), and he points out to Hairy that the spelling (or orthography ) of a word doesn't relate to its meaning (an instance of the use–mention distinction ).
Cueball is using the same joke against Hairy by saying there is a "u" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning". There is a "u" (pronounced as "you") in what Cueball said, implying that Hairy is included in the set of people who mistakenly link orthography and meaning.
Of course, it's very likely that Hairy knows that orthography doesn't determine meaning, and could easily reply "There's also a 'u' in 'People who take aphorisms too literally' ". On the other hand, there is in fact no 'u' in that sentence, which would make it the one actually false statement mentioned.
The title text "There's no 'I' in 'VOWELS'." provides another illustration of the distinction between orthography and meaning. "A", "I" and "U" are vowels, notwithstanding the irrelevant fact that they are not included in the spelling of "VOWELS".
Orthography was the subject of 1069: Alphabet .
[Hairy and Cueball stand opposite each other.] Hairy: Remember, there's no "I" in "team". Cueball: No, but there's a "U" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning".
