Spelling counts
Perhaps I haven't yet mentioned this yet on the blog, but long ago and far away, I was a spelling champ. While I doubt I could win one today, given the kind of words contestants have faced lately (stromuhr? Really?), I'm still intolerant of poor and lazy spelling - which intolerance has carried on, I'm proud to say, to my children, who have learned that if they want to continue using Facebook they must be "friends" with me, and thus may not litter their Facebook discourse with lazy shorthand spellings.
Which leads me to the copy of Town & Country I was perusing at my surgeon's office today: Besides the usual array of jewelry ads (did you know that the latest is slices of precious stones? Neither did I), Social Register galas and furniture for palaces, I encountered an article on perfumes from which I snapped this photo:
Okay, first there's Absinth. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the normally-spelled word "absinthe" had to be truncated to create this perfume name. When I go to Google, of course it says "Did you mean: absinthe"? Well, of course - because that's the correct spelling. I just wish I could get inside the minds of the geniuses who came up with it, or at least have a recording of the brainstorming session and the eureka moment. I can imagine it went something like "Well, absinthe has such a mystique about it but there is that illegal drug aspect . . . so if we take off the 'e' maybe that won't come through so strongly?" No, I didn't think so either.
Look, the bottom line is that I don't like meaningless misspellings. I just drove home behind a Kia Sorento this afternoon, and that bastardization baffles me every time I see it. Kia kept the spelling of Sedona normal - why couldn't they leave well enough alone with Sorrento?
Finally, I simply have to say something about Essence of IX. And as usual, there's a buildup: My mother didn't learn Roman numerals. Many of my Sundays growing up were spent providing my mother with the answers to Roman numeral clues for the New York Times crossword puzzle. But my kids haven't learned Roman numerals either. Maybe I just had the luck to live through the Golden Age of Roman numerals in the late 60s and early 70s.
But I know my mom and my kids aren't alone: On a train ride in Paris several years ago, we heard an American woman talking about getting back to the Hotel George V - only she pronounced it "George Vee." We only barely maintained our composure. So I am concerned when I see a product called "Essence of IX" - because I am just not sure that the purchasing public these days is educated in Roman numerals sufficient to ask for Essence of Nine rather than Essence of Icks.
Posted by Jessica Stone Levy at 10/26/2010 2:06 PM 
Categories: Cosmetics, Transportation, Trademarks
Categories: Cosmetics, Transportation, Trademarks
You'd think that decades of Super Bowls would have trained the American populace on the correct use of Roman numerals. But maybe Essence of IX is targeting a different audience. (Even translated, what are we supposed to make of "Essence of 9"? Should I be ashamed for thinking it has something to do with Client 9, the former governor of New York?)
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I keep thinking of the movie remake of the Broadway musical - not that I saw it, but I do cringe every time I hear Fergie (not the British one) sing one of its numbers on the Broadway radio station. Still, I am not sure what section of the well-heeled buying populace is au courant enough to be conversant in Roman numerals. Maybe they still teach them in those swanky private schools I never attended - Miss Porter's, Le Rosey, Madeira; must be like today's secret handshake.
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