The Punctuation of the Strip

After two weeks of the serious business of analyzing Christina Binkley's messy Steve Wynn bio, I went a a little whimsical this week. You can hear Wynn's reaction to the Encore-punctuation question on this week's upcoming episode of the Strip as well as more news on his plans for redeveloping the golf course. Join us live on Tuesday, 7-8 pm PT, at LVRocks.Com, or grab the podcast on Thursday.

Now, here's this week's Weekly col...

What's in a Dot: The Punctuation of the Strip
by Steve Friess

At some point when I wasn’t looking, they slapped the word “Encore” atop the new building that stands beside the tower for which Encore is the, uh, encore. The original, of course, is Wynn Las Vegas, or “Wynn.” (heretofore written as “Wynn Period”) as it reads in script on it and on bottles of water and God only knows what else.

It kind of disappointed me, that “Encore” sign did. There was no punctuation to chew over. In the process, it seemed to be undermining the very notion that this new building was a continuation of some sort of thought or concept begun by Wynn Period.

You probably think I’m a grammar geek. Guilty. But punctuation is very, very important in Las Vegas. Almost nothing, not even a dot after a name, is done without a great deal of thought. When Steve Wynn decided to make his building read Wynn Period, he was making a point. This was his big comeback after Kirk Kerkorian and the MGM crowd snapped up Mirage Resorts and, with it, the Bellagio, which had been seen up till then as Wynn’s crowning masterpiece.

In 2005, his new building screamed Wynn Period as if to say, “This is the Wynn. Period.” Wynn once told me as much, explaining it was a subtle way of saying that this is the definition of his embodiment as a resort, the ultimate. As subtle, that is, as you can be on top of a 42-story building and so many bottles of water.

There are other ways up and down the Strip that punctuation comes into play in an important way.

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