I received the following submission from faithful reader Lee:
Location: Morrisville, North Carolina
I love it — not only because of the fantastic spelling, but because it’s making me think about a discussion regarding the word thru.
Start thinking.
Thanks, Lee!
The Grammar Vandal 
“Drive-Through” would have required more letters, which would mean a larger sign, which would cost more. I’m sure they were just trying to be cost-efficient.
That’s no excuse!
There is definitely no excuse for “enterance”. But “thru” and “through” are like “alright” and “all right” in that both are used frequently and cause no ambiguity to a reader.
Check out this example from the Associated Press that uses both variants in the same article (relevant since I deduce from your blog’s history that you respect AP style). The author’s heading reads “Patrons toss dead cat through drive-thru“; the article commences with “An employee working the drive-through window at a McDonald’s will have a tale to tell.”
The natural evolution of language will inevitably either favor one spelling over the other or create a more distinctive purpose for each variant. For now, “through” is the popular choice, and while “thru” may look odd in certain circumstances, the two can be used interchangeably.
Then the middle “e” in enterence made the sign unnecessarily bigger and thus wasted tax payers’ money!
How about dr-thr entr? It would avoid spelling uncertainty and be even more cost-efficient.
brandon: They could have taken one of the letters from “Enterance”.
I suggest one of the e’s.
“thru” was used by the Chicago Tribune from 1935 to 1975.
The Chicago Tribune at that time was run by a spelling simplification advocate (and those who tried to continue that tradition after he retired). That editor was just one of many people who desired spelling reform, and the Tribune was his little experiment. They stopped using simplified spelling in 1975 because it was awkward and inconsistent. Mark Twain, Noah Webster, and Teddy Roosevelt were other advocates for spelling reform.
I approve of ‘thru’ because it omits superfluous letters that no longer hold any literary necessity.
That’s nice. I resisted the urge to use this photo for one of my own posts but blogged my thoughts on ‘thru’ ,here.
I don’t know, I think it looks uneducated.
It would be more simple if the phrase “drive up” was used. It has few letters.