WHERE’S THE PEE-ZONE?

If you’re going to come up with a cleverly invented name or spelling for your product or service, make sure it doesn’t create any inadvertent pronunciations.

Case in point: Pizza Hut has been promoting its line of calzones as P’Zones. They want you to pronounce that as “puh-zones.”

Unfortunately, my eyes see and my brain perceives it as “pee-zones,” which doesn’t do a lot to build up my appetite or my impression of the pizza chain. Sounds more like an area in the back of the store. (Apologies to those with delicate sensibilities.)

If you come up with a name that can be mispronounced in a less-than-flattering way, don’t be arrogant enough to assume that everyone will automatically default to the correct pronunciation, because I promise you, they won’t.