"Fair" is a word people are hearing a lot at the moment if they listen to political discussion. There is much debate about how it means different things to politicians of different hues and can be used to justify seemly contradictory courses of action. In science, "fair" is also a word that is used by children and teachers in different ways. Teachers are all familiar with the child whose idea of a fair test is for everyone to have a turn; and the partially developed view of fair testing that creates an extensive list of variables to be controlled with no consideration of whether they would affect the result. However, the author's main thoughts were not about fair testing, but the use of the word when one is not carrying out a fair test procedure. Working on the book "It's not fair--or is it?" challenged a lot of the author's assumptions about investigations and made her rethink the language she uses to talk about them. This article presents the author's personal interpretation, not taken from "It"s not fair--or is it?," but resulting from the thinking that went into it.