A Burger King TV ad has an apostrophe the wrong way around
Do you remember Burger King’s “Have it you’re way” ad campaign?
Of course you don’t. It was “Have it your way.” Back then — 1974, the web informs me — Burger King knew how to use an apostrophe. Today, not so much.
I’m afraid this is another thrilling installment in “As the Apostrophe Turns,” my long, lonely crusade against the misuse of everyone’s favorite possessive punctuation mark. But the apostrophe doesn’t serve only to signal possession; it also indicates when a letter has been removed. You’re is short for you are.
And ’em is short for them.
Note the composition of that apostrophe. It floats up there like a tiny number 9, or as the Beatles put it, “Number nine, number nine, number nine …”
It does not float up there like a tiny number 6, which is how it appeared in a Burger King commercial I saw the other day on my television.
The ad was for a Whopper Jr. promotion. The conceit was that you could get two of the baby burgers for a mere $5: one for you and one for a friend. But — spoiler alert! — you’d probably want to consume the pair yourself. Or, as the text on the screen put it:
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I grabbed my remote, rewound, paused and took a photo. This was the Zapruder film to me, even if the JK stood for “Just kidding,” not “John Kelly.”
This must not stand, or — to keep with the theme — it mustn’t stand.
Look, I don’t care if civilians get it wrong. But Burger King is a multibillion-dollar company that presumably paid millions of dollars to a big ad agency to come up with that commercial. And they don’t bother to get it right?
It’s not as if Burger King doesn’t have a close and loving relationship with the apostrophe. In Australia, the chain is known as Hungry Jack’s. If I was to quote a Cockney saying that, I’d write: Ooh, luv. Shall we go to ’ungry Jack’s?
I would not write: Ooh, luv. Shall we go to ‘ungry Jack’s?
Still, I wouldn’t say that the company that owns Burger King and Hungry Jack’s — Restaurant Brands International — is overly enamored with the apostrophe. Among its other brands are Tim Hortons and Popeyes — not Tim Horton’s and Popeye’s.
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I emailed the fast-food chain and its ad agency — Chicago-based OKRP — seeking comment but didn’t hear back. But, really, what are they going to say? We didn’t know it was wrong? We knew and didn’t care?
Still, I do like their burgers.
Mistakes were made
I’ve found that one surefire way to make a mistake is to point out someone else’s error. That’s why most journalists are afraid to do that. Every error we see — every A-section correction we read — carries strong “There but for the grace of God go I” vibes.
There are vast swaths of grammar that I’m a bit shaky on. So sweaty do I get just thinking about “lay” and “lie” that I deliberately write around any usage of them. As for “who” vs. “whom,” howm should I know?
Really, the only hill I’m willing to die on is Mount Apostrophe. That’s because it isn’t that hard!
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What about you? Is there a hill you’re willing to die on? I mean, not literally. Or maybe “literally” — the misuse thereof — is exactly the hill you’re willing to die on. Is there a seemingly inconsequential thing that raises your hackles every time you encounter it? Send the details — with “My death hill” in the subject line — to me at john.kelly@washpost.com.
Flushed with pride
This isn’t exactly a death hill to me, but I do appreciate a nice lock on a public bathroom. Give me a twirly knob that locks sturdily and announces “Occupied” or “Vacant.”
This isn’t just for when I’m, um, in the hot seat, but also for when I’m on the outside. I’m still scarred from the time I opened the rusty restroom door on a ferry crossing Lake Champlain.
This is all a roundabout way of announcing that the new restrooms at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport took top honors last month at the 2023 America’s Best Restroom contest, sponsored by Cintas Corp.
I wrote about the facilities — in Concourses B and C — in July. Designed by AECOM, they’re practically worth missing your flight over. The prize includes an UltraClean(!) from Cintas and $2,500 in cleaning supplies.
And, of course, the BWI bathrooms now take their place in America’s Best Restroom Hall of Fame. They’re No. 1 for Nos. 1 and 2.
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