No, not my torn rotator cuff, although that has me pondering my will to live. I had always wondered what a gunshot felt like...now I know. But I want to discuss a torment of a different kind: the abuse of our language. What I am about to reveal is driving me nuts, tearing away at my mental equilibrium.
Yes, folks, it's corporate America and their fondness of deliberate misspellings in their business names. Example: Kwik-Kar. I ask you, why not Quick-Car? How about Kwik-Kopy? Did they think that this cutesy-wootsey substitution of letters would result in a deluge of customers? DID THEY?? Kudos to the companies that don't cave in to this dreadful pattern. How stupid would it look if it were Barnz & Nobull?
You know something's up when "In" becomes "Inn", "forever" becomes "4ever", "be" becomes "bee", "easy" becomes "EZ" and so on.
The most egregious sin I've seen was not a deliberate misspelling but sheer ignorance. A Dodge dealership opened on I-30 and called itself, "Chaperral Dodge". Their sign had the mistake, all their letterheads had it wrong, also all their advertising. When contacted, they said they found out too late about the misspelling and couldn't afford to redo everything.
As I wonder how all this got started, I'm tempted to think it began with The Beatles.
By the way, I'm ashamed of you for not knowing it was really supposed to be "Chaparral".
1 comment:
Text messaging among non-native English speakers has made reading students' papers a real pain. I've always hated how those companies deliberately misspelled their names. Did I get that from you? It bugged me even in elementary school.
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