Saturday, October 11, 2008

Hey, Apple! Funnest Is Not a Word

I've posted before concerning my dislike for inventive spelling in company names or who can't spell the name of their product. I've even ranted about badly-written advertisements.

Apple manages to offend under both of the latter two categories. They can offer no earthly reason for the lower-case "i" at the beginning of their product names except an attempt at cuteness. They then compound the problem by adding slang in the tag line for their newest, unnecessary, and over-priced product. What, pray tell, is so wrong with saying they've made the "most fun" device in their catalog?

In case you don't understand the problem, let me explain. Funnest is not a word. The adjective "fun" does not take suffixes to specify degrees of just how enjoyable of a thing it modifies. You can write that you had "more fun" or "less fun" or that an activity was the "most fun" you've ever had. Funner and funnest are the sorts of mistakes that teachers explain away by the third grade.

And so, I've lost respect for Apple. I would have thought that a company priding itself on appearing intelligent and well-informed would have told the advertising company that pitched this ad just where they could have some fun (playing on the freeway, for instance). Instead, they've chosen illiterate-looking over intelligent-sounding ads. For shame, Apple.


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