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Sunday, January 18, 2015

Apostrophe Atrocity

A new pizza parlor opened up on my side of town.  It's called Blaze Pizza, and it serves the best personal pan pizzas around.  I love it.  I am bothered, though, that their promotional materials all advertised "Fast Fire'd Pizza."  Why is there an apostrophe in "Fire'd"?  It really bothers me.  It shouldn't be there.  This weekend I asked some employees about it, but they didn't have a solution.  I decided to write to corporate and see what they had to say.  Here is the e-mail I sent this afternoon:

Hello,

I'm writing because I have a question about your marketing materials.  I notice that they all say that your pizza is "fast fire'd."  I'm confused by the presence of the potentially superfluous apostrophe.  The word "fired" is usually spelled without an apostrophe, so I'm wondering why one is utilized in this case.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why does this girl have nothing better to do than question our apostrophes?  Why doesn't she just shut up and enjoy our wonderful 'fast fire'd' pizza in peace?"  I do, Blaze. I do.  I love your pizza.  I'll patronize your restaurant with or without erroneous punctuation.  Your pizza is too delicious to miss.  My conscience forces me to ask, though, because I'm an English teacher.  I'm always telling my students to be on the lookout for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.  Errors lurk in every corner of our society.  I would be hypocritical if wasn't on the lookout as well.  

The way I see it, grammar and punctuation are huge issues in the American mainstream population.  Due to various educational failures, many citizens walk the streets without any knowledge of proper English.  It's appalling.  Therefore the main request of this e-mail is an educational one.  If the apostrophe has a legitimate grammatical reason for appearing in your promotional materials, please explain it to me so that I can be more knowledgeable in instructing my children about punctuation.  If it's not supposed to be there, can you please remove it so that we are not perpetuating apostrophe misuse to our impressionable youth?

I asked the staff at my local Blaze pizza about this issue, and none of them were able to help me.  One of them is a college-level English student, and she too was perplexed.  Please help me solve the mystery, and I will pass my answer along to the employees at my local store as well.  Thank you!

Christine Webb

I don't know how far I'm willing to go with this grammar crusade.  After all, Krispie Kreme has horrific spelling, yet I still eat their doughnuts.  For some reason, punctuation errors seem worse than spelling ones.  Especially since the spelling error at Krispie Kreme is obviously intentional.  The error at Blaze is baffling.  I wish they would fix it... it hurts my eyes.  I will have to update later with a response if I get one!

2 comments:

  1. I can honestly say that you are the only one of my friends who would email a corporate office about this. Good for you! I hope they respond and put your mind at ease :)

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  2. I was with you during your initial horror. Now I can't unsee it. :) I hope they write back soon. Maybe with free pizzas!!!

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