When You Give a Writer Time to Think

Where I live just north of Chicago, we literally have more restaurant choices than we know what to do with, and most of those are independently owned small business ventures. That means it’s rare that I can’t find a non-fast food chain option when I want to take my boys for a quick dinner.

Of course, fast food chains are good at two things: making food cheap and fast, and marketing themselves to kids. My boys have eaten some fantastic dogs and burgers around town, but they’ll still jump at a chance to go to McDonald’s or Steak ’n Shake.

Now, my local Steak ’n Shake happens to have particularly slow service, so when we went there recently I had a long time to think about whatever was on the wall as we waited for our food. When you give a writer time to think, you have to be prepared for anything from the wonderfully imaginative to the extraordinarily finicky.

Well, maybe this was the latter kind, because as I studied the vintage photographs of the early days of the restaurant, I suddenly noticed an anomaly: the “n” in Steak ’n Shake had only one apostrophe.

You might be asking, “Huh?” “Who cares?” or even, “What’s wrong with that?”—and these would all be legit questions. Let me suggest that there both is and is not anything wrong, but that at any rate business owners should take note.

Finicky Grammar Matters

First, what was anomalous here? Well, if we look at our handy Chicago Manual of Style (it’s okay to admit it if you don’t have one) we see that, generally, when you contract or shorten a word, you insert an apostrophe to indicate the missing letters. We do this all the time:

Shortening a word like “and” would technically require two apostrophes, as in rock ’n’ roll.

One could quibble with the Steak ’n Shake name and say that there is something wrong, then, if the ’n is supposed to stand for and. One could, say, ask whether a two-letter word belongs in the middle: in? on? an?

What’s Really at Stake

Obviously, most people won’t trip over this minor matter. Instead, we permit the grammatical glitch in favor of getting on with our lives (if we notice it at all). In this sense, there is nothing wrong with the Steak ’n Shake name.

The fact of the matter is that the English language has evolved over many centuries and continues to change with usage. The rules are helpful to gather us around agreed standards, but they will never trump the ability of communities to use words and punctuation in meaningful, if nonstandard ways.

In fact, I included some nonstandard contractions in my list above. How does will not become won’t? Probably has something to do with how awkward it would be to say willn’t, but nobody sweats this weird transformation.

Similarly, is shouldn’t’ve really proper English? Well, maybe I’d’ve told my students not to use it in an academic essay, but I use it on social media all the time because we tend to write like we speak when we write online.

Generally speaking, most businesses don’t need to worry too much about grammar geeks because they are not a big part of most audiences and, to the extent that they are librarians and academics and writers, they probably don’t have a ton of disposable income to spend on your product or service anyway.

The Takeaway

That said, if there’s a takeaway here, it’s that we still consider good writing a sign of authority and professionalism in our culture (which is probably a good thing). When we see typos, a small part of us thinks the brand is maybe sloppy or hasty, even if we don’t consciously plan to shop elsewhere.

(But this is why I actually went through and keyed in Alt+0146 to get the right curly quote on those ’ns. If they all looked like this, ‘n, someone might rightly call me on it and think me sloppy.)

The stakes, then, are the public perception of your brand. You should at least make sure that, if you’re going to break a rule, you do it consciously and for a good purpose.

Most importantly, make sure you are consistent.

Ultimately, we’ll forgive or accept most things you do with words so long as (a) they’re meaningful and (b) you’re consistent about it.

When I posted my idle thought about the ’n to Facebook, an editor friend of mine complained that he has seen at least five different spellings, in corporate publications, of Linens N Things. That’s clearly a problem. Whatever your brand is, commit to it, already.

Consistency tells your audience that you’re using language decisively and with purpose, and people who use language decisively tend to seem more authoritative. Authority compels trust, and trust translates into sales.

So, do what you want with words—you’re not going to break the language. But do it well if you want to ensure that even the most finicky customers trust your brand.

Image: Ildar Sagdejev/Wikimedia Commons