Sometimes I really wish somebody would have a word with the guy who came up with the Tim Hortons trademark. As a professional communicator, it irritates me to see so many Tim Hortons donut shops when we really should be seeing Tim Horton’s shops. Do you see where I’m going here?
(For those of you not familiar with Tim Hortons, it’s the largest chain of its kind in Canada. Once upon a time, there was only one Tim Hortons shop. Now there’s one about every 500 feet or so. When traveling on the road, we Canadians inevitably look for the nearest Timmy’s sign, or watch to see where the squad car ahead of us is pulling in.)
But I digress. I was ranting about their grammatically incorrect signs.
When we’re in editing mode for our business partners or clients, it’s our job to make sure pieces of communication are edited to style standards and that spelling and grammar are correct. Or, as one of my business partners puts it, I “put things in good English” for her. That means putting commas where commas should be and apostrophes where apostrophes should be.
This is why I’m convinced that whoever developed the Tim Hortons trademark missed the class on The Elements of Grammar, the indubitably indispensable companion to that book we all love to hate, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
The first Tim Hortons was started in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, by the great Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Tim Horton. So it was actually Tim Horton’s donut shop. It wasn’t owned by two Tim Hortons. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to know that the Tim Hortons trademark really should be in the possessive: Tim Horton’s. Somewhere along the line somebody must have dropped an apostrophe behind the couch and forgotten to pick it up. And I know at least one of my colleagues has the same pet peeve I do about this.
Of course I still have a Timmy’s card and enjoy a cup of their decaf every once in a while, just like a bazillion other Canadians. And I guess the tagline, “Always Fresh. Always Grammatically Incorrect” wouldn’t work too well for the Timmys brand.
I also don’t imagine that the Canadians who flock to Tim Hortons every morning on the way to work worry too much about whether there should be an apostrophe in the name. They just want their caffeine fix. It’s often only us—or should it be we?—communicators who notice these little things, because we work with words for a living.
The status of the ubiquitously recognizable Tim Hortons logo is—dare I say it—proof positive that you don’t always have to follow the traditional rules of grammar to get your message out there, and be successful. Tim Hortons is a shining example of a hugely successful Canadian brand (even if it’s a good case study of bad grammar).
In thousands of towns and cities across Canada, you can always find a good cup of coffee at Timmy’s when you need your caffeine fix. Too bad you just can’t find a good old-fashioned apostrophe at Tim Hortons, too. I’d even take one to go.
