11 November 2006
Dear Stelios,
I was filing my recent correspondence when I came across my letter 25 October 2006 on the subject of your organisation (to which you still have not responded – my nephew’s friend tells me that you are a busy man, but I hope I am not mistaken in believing there is still such a thing as courtesy in the 21st century). I was shocked to realise that I had written the name of your organisation as “easyJet” – not once, but throughout the letter! Such a careless and sustained typing error was, I knew, unforgivable.
Imagine my surprise, then, on making enquiries and discovering that my supposed error was in fact an accurate representation of the capitalisation employed by your organisation, and that the typing error was not in fact mine, but yours!
When I say that the error was yours, I am not so naïve as to think that you do all your own typing, and I’m sure that one of your employees – most likely your secretary – is responsible for the mistake. Nevertheless, I hope that you are in the habit of checking through your documents before making them official – I always check my letters thoroughly for errata and would have been mortified to discover that the miscapitalisation of your organisation was my mistake, but this mortification is surely nothing to the embarrassment that ought to be felt by you not merely as an individual but as the owner of a business!
I would point out that, as an emerging company, you are in a position to influence vulnerable and often ill-educated minds. What with the current breakdown in understanding of grammar throughout society, growing classroom sizes and the shortage of English-speaking teachers, I would suggest that it is absolutely essential that companies such as your own set a good example in the use of language.
I therefore urge you to correct this error before too many people are influenced by it and you contribute to the continuing breakdown in proper English. Need I point out that there are absolutely no precedents for the use of a capital letter in the middle of a word? As a proper noun your company name is entitled to a capital letter at the beginning of each word (should you wish to employ more than one). I would suggest the most obvious solutions would be to use either the spelling “Easyjet” or “Easy Jet”. If, on the other hand, the capitalisation of the “J” arose from a genuine desire to stress the word “Jet”, you might rather consider the variations “Jeteasy” or “Jet Easy”.
I hope you are able to give my recommendations serious and urgent consideration.
Yours unhappily,
Ms Ann Bartholdy
25 October 2006
Dear Stelios,
For many years now I have had a particular desire to fly an aeroplane, something which, on account of my means and gender, seemed an impossible dream. I was therefore delighted when a friend of my nephew mentioned to me the “easyJet” organisation – at last, I thought, there is a company which has been designed to make it easy for me and people like me to realise our ambitions to fly a jet.
Imagine my surprise, then, when upon making enquiries with easyJet I was told that, in order to fly one of your aeroplanes, I would have to complete (at the very least) a three year course at the cost of some £3,000 a year!!
Is this what you would call easy? Putting aside the cost (and I am not a woman of means), I doubt that many people are in a position to take a three year holiday from whatever job they do! What sort of employer would allow such a thing anyway?
I can only imagine that the uptake on your easyJet service is currently extremely slow, though perhaps this is deliberate and in fact you did not wish to make it easy for decent, ordinary people to fly after all, so much as to curry favour with the kind of millionaire who would take a trip to the moon just because they can afford to, like in fact I read that David Bowie is planning to do with his wife Iman in the near future. Perhaps you are hoping to attract the likes of David Bowie and his wife Iman to use your aeroplanes?
If not, however, maybe you would like to consider whether you could make the service you offer more genuinely easy – I don’t doubt that flying a jet is not as simple as, for example, playing an arcade game where you fly a jet (in any case one wouldn’t feel safe with a lot of teenage boys flying jets in our skies), but surely a course of, say, three weeks would be more appropriate for a casual jet enthusiast than making them commit to a whole three years to achieve their dreams?
Yours dissatisfiedly,
Ms Ann Bartholdy
