Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Losing the battle

Some chicken, pork and corn in the barbequeImage via Wikipedia
I can't help feeling that the forces of good are losing an important battle... that try as we may we're just constantly losing ground to those in the wrong. To the point that I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't just pack it in and admit bitter defeat...

The glorious struggle I refer to is as regards preserving the correct spelling of the word 'barbecue'. For years now I've seen 'barbeque' (sic) graduate from a sign of poor education to an accepted 'alternate' spelling to what I fear might by now be a majority spelling. The fact that pronouncing that spelling any way other than 'barbekay' breaks orthographic rules in any of several languages seems to do nothing to dissuade people from believing that the initialism 'BBQ' in some way is a shortened form of the word's correct spelling. These people probably also write 'eazy' for similar reasons.

I felt like giving in the towel after seeong a bag of chips today that used the q misspelling on it: an officially packaged product, no the less. More frustrating, it had the correct spelling on the French part of the packaging. So the people who made the chips are at least aware that the word can be spelt with a 'c'.

Sigh.

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