As opposed to “women’s restroom”?

When you think about it, “female toilet” doesn’t make much sense at all, does it?

Great name: nook

There’s an issue in advertising and identity design—maybe in all creative endeavors—commonly referred to as “not created here” syndrome. Well, there’s probably a better name for it than that, but that’s what I’m going with. Basically, it means creative people are less likely to approve of work done by somebody else. In fact, they’re more likely to say it stinks. I’m probably just as guilty as the next guy, and just to prove how snarky I can be, here’s something I’ve been itching to poke fun at:

Are there two Barnes & Nobles at the Irvine Spectrum Center? And, no less, they’re both to the right?

But anyways, speaking of Barnes & Nobles, I do like to try and give credit where credit is due.

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A new breed of unnecessary apostrophe

Look! It’s unnecessary quotation mark’s ugly cousin, the unnecessary apostrophe. Usually only spotted preceding an “s,” this is a rare and exciting find.

Fire! Let’s egress the hell out of here!!

Scene: Rob and a friend wait for the molasses-powered elevator at the Sheraton San Diego. The emergency exit floor-plan is posted nearby.

Rob: “Egress?”

Jim: “Yeah. It’s the opposite of ‘ingress.’”

Jim was right. “Egress” is the opposite of “ingress.” I was impressed by the demonstration of verbal aptitude. But he’d also failed to see my point.

Jim, realizing why I’d pointed it out: “Oh, yeah…I don’t know why they didn’t just say ‘Exit.’”

This sign reminds me of at least three thoughts to keep in mind for those of us tasked with choosing the right words.

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More unnecessary quotation marks

I posted about this nerdy pet peeve of mine awhile back. Here it is rearing its ugly head again, this time accompanied by its friend, Unnecessary Capitalization.

(I haven’t won yet.) This extraneous punctuation got me thinking about people’s natural tendency to over-complicate things like names and logos, not to mention products and product features. Why is it so difficult to make things simple? And is simplicity really what we want, anyway?

Redundant: Arizona Leather Leather Sale

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It’s unfortunate when a descriptive name overstays its welcome. Companies pursue new product or service lines in an attempt to grow, technologies change, and descriptive names become irrelevant. There are plenty of examples: American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M), and Southwest Airlines, which no longer operates only in the Southwest. When you don’t want to stand for that one thing anymore, your options are pretty much limited to changing the name or abbreviating the name (and rendering it meaningless, a la IBM–International Business Machines).

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