Friday, 1 April 2011

I See What You're Doing

I opened the latest Sears flyer today to find this ad. I've noticed over the past few years companies are trying to encourage dumb acronyms, like Payless Shoes' BOGO - buy one, get one half off. They now simply call it "the BOGO" sale, with no explanation of what the acronym means, but it doesn't matter, because the public knows what it means.

Also a few years ago, the Bank of Montreal became BMO, and the Royal Bank of Canada, RBC. (I overheard a converstation between some girls in a store just yesterday: one said, ""where do you bank?" and the other responded nonchalantly, "RBC.")

I guess our society is more and more accustomed to shortened, faster ways of communicating, but it still hurts my heart a little to see our language whittle away to signs and signals like cavemen.

And you will never, ever, catch me referring to the "lowest price of the season" as "LPS".
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous2 April 2011 at 18:19

    LPS? Yeah, that's weak.

    Also, my project team is comprised mostly of Quebecers. I'm not sure what it is about those guys, but for every acronym, they just want to pronounce it. For example, one of the systems we use? SAP. We say "ess ay pee." They say "sap." My position on the team? SME. "Ess em ee." They say "smee." (Isn't that just an icky thing to be called?) What's up with that?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bex4 April 2011 at 20:02

    Ew, yeah, I hate "smee" as well. It sounds like "smegma," and I won't even go into that. When I was taking a technical writing course, the instructor had a technical writer speak to our class and he kept referring to "smees". Ew.

    It's like people who say "ay-sap" for ASAP. Hate.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)