Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

When I worked in advertising as an IT guy, I used to have conversations about editorial copy all the time. (This is before I joined the language dodge fully, though I was involved with the American Dialect Society at the time). Even when I could bring to bear all the best authorities on a matter, and (as far as I was concerned) prove that they were making a mistake, the copywriters would still go their merry ways, mistakes in hand. In fact, it seemed as if they wanted to break grammar, syntax, and spelling rules. The large kinds of rule-breaking would never fly -- nudity, obscene words, truly avant-garde art -- but breaking a language rule would often be approved (or would slip by). It was a mark of some kind of character, I guess. Much the way that some folks express all of their identity in the way they do their hair. Or they way school kids, even when forced to wear a uniform, will find some way of making it their own so that they seem different from everyone else.

Take it a step further, Robert, a step beyond annoyance. Why are so many restaurants making this mistake? How are the mistakes different from each other? How are they the same? How could they make a mistake that wasn't caused by being lazy, self-loathing, or having something wrong with them?

There are a number of possibilities at play here.

—Though the expression is borrowed into English, its orthography is French, which makes it hard for Anglophones to spell: in "prix-fixe" we have two sounds for the vowel "i," two sounds for the consonant "x," a hyphen, and a silent E. Even people who know the word and have tried to learn it, or have learned it, still might get it wrong on occasion.

—They may not have any book-knowledge or specific instruction on the word in the first place.

—They may believe it's an English word and should follow English spelling rules.

—They may even think it's restaurant slang or jargon, and understand (as speakers usually instinctively do) that the spelling, therefore, can be a bit more fluid or irregular.

—There is no Official Restaurant Style Guide.

—They may prefer a variant spelling, either because it is more aesthetically pleasing or out of pure cussedness or because of GO 'MERICA!

—They may have a problem with spelling any unusual word.

—They don't doubt their own spelling at all so looking it up doesn't even occur to them.

—Maybe they were instructed to spell it that way.

Words borrowed from other languages often undergo transformations in spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Sometimes that transformation is abrupt, sometime it is herky-jerky, sometimes it is delayed, rarely does it never undergo any transformation at all.

In fact, nearly all of the complaints I hear or read about language are the result of an observant person noticing something changing before that change is complete. It is neither fish nor fowl and so it seems to be an abomination. Maybe it triggers the "not one of us! push the enemy out!" impulses in the tribal brain of the observer.

Spelling errors are everywhere! How do you ever go out to eat? 🙂

When my family lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a neighborhood utterly festooned with restaurants, my wife and would agree on a number, usually under ten, and then walk down either Fifth Avenue or Seventh Avenue. We'd tick off the restaurants one by one, left and right, and when we hit the number, that's where we'd go. Later we added one veto apiece to make it a little more accommodating if the restaurant was a something like a churrascaria place (my wife is a reluctant meat-eater) or an ice-cream shop.

We had many a very good meal this way, and only a few duds.