EZ On? FU!
I was driving along today and saw a sign for a McDonald's on the highway that said, "EZ On/Off."That drives me crazy. That "EZ" stuff. We see that all the time. Why? Why is it somehow acceptable and even preferred to spell this simple, four-letter word like that? You're not even saving much, because it's not like EZ is an abbreviation for Antidisestablishmentarianism. It's a second-grade sort of word to begin with.
You know where you see it most? With crappy, infomercial-grade, "as seen on TV" products. Why is spelling something incorrectly somehow the right thing to do? I guess the idea is that companies don't want to leave out the super illiterate demographic. "If we wrote 'Easy On/Off,' someone might not know that it is, in fact, easy to get on and off the highway to give us business. But if we wrote 'EZ On/Off,' we're golden!"
The same goes for "Kwik" for "Quick." You see that one a lot, too. Notice the trend and how it relates to bad products: "It's kwik. It's EZ. It's krap!"
It's time to put the misspellings to bed; it's an old and played out trick.
Not too long ago I got instructions from a client to create an ad that contained some "Krazy Koupons." I delivered them a proof that had regular old crazy coupons; I guess you could say I didn't want to get too crazy.
"Everything looks pretty good," was the feedback. "Can you just change the Crazy Coupons to, you know....like, spell them with a K."
"Yeah, I saw that. I really don't think you should do that," I said, and then I told them why:
For starters, it's not original. It's not exciting stuff, it's been done into the ground. Also, it's not clever, cute, classy, or catchy. It's lame. It probably would have been all those things in 1947, but now it's just played out and makes the product look like cheap crap that should be sold at one of the kiosks in the mall that sells a belt that claims it will make you lose weight by sweating. And finally, in this particular case, there wasn't even any play-on-words with the "K" motif. It's not like the company was called "Kramden's Knishes" or something where maybe you could argue that Ks were kind of "their thing." This was just a bad idea.
Spelling stuff wrong on purpose to try to be cheeky is not cute. Especially when it's the word EZ. Not in 2006. It makes me feel like I'm really stupid, like I should speak like this: "EZ On/Off! Me happy it EZ on since I hungry. It kool to have EZ off, 2!"
Just my worthless opinions, of course.
posted by Steve @ 11:17 AM
6 Comments:
Mmmm....knishes...
I hate how these darn kids today spell everything all TXT-MSG-like. Why doesn't anyone care about spelling or grammar any more? Okay, I admit I go fast and loose with certain phonetic spellings ("gonna" is one of my favorites) but it's really freaking hard to read any given sentence a fourteen year old types out. I'm frightened to know what their school papers look like. I never wrote like that as a kid. My journals from my teen years are so intelligible, it's scary. At one point I even chided myself for not using my scribble time to improve my writing skills.
So, I guess my rant has more to do with the general mangling of the English language and not Krazy Koupon Klipper type things, but I know whatcha mean, ya know?
[[[[ Mmmm....knishes... ]]]]]]
I was trying to come up with a fictitional company that started with a K and knishes was the first thing I came up with. I knew you'd appreciate it because you mentioned knishes in your post about people who come to Brooklyn and complain about the locals.
[[[[I hate how these darn kids today spell everything all TXT-MSG-like. Why doesn't anyone care about spelling or grammar any more? ]]]]
Oh, wow, now you're really getting into things that I love to rant about. Needless to say, I've had many discussions over the years about how email, IM, and text messanging is killing the written word. A critic of mine may say that I am a stickler for things that don't count, but it's gotten to the point that some of the writing is so bad that I really don't have any clue what my conversants are saying. So, if ultimately you recognize that writing is about communicating something, if it can't do that clearly, it's just not good. I sometimes get IMs where I stare at one line for 30 seconds trying to figure out what they're asking or saying.
[[[ I never wrote like that as a kid. ]]]]
There is definitely a generational thing going on that I've seen. The older you get, it seems the more likely people know how to write basic English (even people who you wouldn't expect to be particularly adept writers,
My problem is that sometimes I fire through these things because I don't have time to carefully write them and I end up making typos. Especially on my laptop, because it's got the small keyboard and I make lots of mistakes.
Here's a great example: last night I posted that response to the "meatball flag" comment, and I wrote, "a flag that mean's 'No Surfing,'" with the apostrophe in "means." I had written something earlier that had an apostrophe and did a quick edit/change of word and the apostrophe inadvertently got left behind. It really bugs me that someone might come across that and think that I thought there was supposed to be an apostrophe there. And with Blogger here, you can't edit the comment, which is annoying.
I teach those "middle scoolers" - another term I hate especially since my school is still called a junior high- and let me tell you, they cannot write. Their papers are fraught with IM speak. And spelling! I had to convince an entire class once that there was no such word as "dieing." They actually went to the dictionary on this one thinking they would prove their teacher wrong. But commas and apostrophes have taken the biggest hit. They no longer exist. So sad.
This drives me ape s**t. My five year old is learning to read. Do I let her believe that the backwards R in toy R us is correct? Do I let her believe that it's even proper English?
Pre-reading skills are the skills you pick up from birth to five years of age. Every sign that can be seen is going to have an impact on a child. I tell the Girl all of the time that "No, you don't want to learn that word. Mommy will tell you the real word for "easy" or whatever it is."
She usually gives me the 100 yard blank stare and then shakes her head at me... I can almost hear the Chester Cheetah noise coming out of her brain.
(She just wanted to know what the sign said and could she go to the bathroom now?)
T
[[[ This drives me ape s**t. My five year old is learning to read. Do I let her believe that the backwards R in toy R us is correct? Do I let her believe that it's even proper English? ]]]]
I hear that! There are just tons of problems with "Toys R Us." We can take our pick:
1. The R needs to be written forward.
2. The R should be "are."
3. The "Us" should be "We." "Toys Are We"
4. Or, to say it even more colloquially, "We Are Toys."
Yeah, nothing but problems with that store. Or, at least, the store's name.
O, Kwit ur bitchin'.
Funny story though, Rich and our friend Megan (who is the biggest perpetrator of this IM speak) were having an online conversation one day. Out of the blue, Rich emails me a portion of the conversation, with his addition: "What the HELL does this say??" I wish we still had the segment because it was damned funny, but after a few minutes I managed to translate "Meganspeak" into proper english for him. Turns out she was describing an encounter she had at the bar with this guy whom she's been friends with, but not sure if anything was going anywhere with. However she managed to condense the entire encounter into somewhere around 25 characters...
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