Tag Archives: quotation marks

Say Wath?

The title of this post isn’t a typo. It’s a reaction to a sign I saw recently:

I don’t know WATH a COFFEE with a BOTTOM is, but I do know that someone should have proofread the sign before placing it on the sidewalk. Ditto for this one:

I’m ignoring the quotation marks around include. (Seriously, though, why would anyone enclose include in quotation marks? Forget I asked! I just remembered I’m ignoring!) Instead, I direct your attention to the next bullet point, 30 min message. A message from whom? About what? Thirty minutes makes for a lengthy message, but it’s a decent amount of time for a “massage.”

One more:

GARBADGE caught my eye first, perhaps in a moment of nostalgia for my Girl Scout days, when I earned quite a few badges. But the part of this sign that most interests me is FROM THE RESTAURANT. I still can’t figure out whether THIS SPACE is FROM THE RESTAURANT (which, grammatically, is the correct interpretation) or the GARBADGE CONTAINERS are FROM THE RESTAURANT. I guess either/both could work better than the sign, which was posted a few feet above several overflowing GARBADGE bins. I may go into THE RESTAURANT and ask, after I stop for a COFFEE with a BOTTOM and a 30 min message. You’re welcome to join me!

I Can Only Hope

When Pandora opened her mythical box and the world’s evils flew out, what remained was hope. In these signs, grammar and spelling and punctuation have taken flight. This post concerns what I hope remains. First, skill with scissors:

I hope the proprietors are good barbers, because the salon is certainly not wasting any energy inserting an apostrophe in kids’ (or kid’s, if only one child is welcome as a “walk-in”). Fortunately, men’s is properly punctuated.

This sign directs my hope to falling (actually, NOT falling) masonry:

What do I hope? That the company maintaining the exterior walls looming over my head in NYC is better at pointing, painting, piping, and venting than it is at spelling. Verticle? Seriously? Moving on to moving:

Here I hope that every client’s move is a great experience. Were I to use this firm (not that I’m going anywhere except on vacation), I would hope for better grammar (our employees our?) and punctuation (safe positive?).

Last but definitely not least:

Where do I start? Spelling: seperate or softner? Subject-verb agreement: work include? Punctuation: double quotation marks for the first line and single for the second? And why any quotation marks at all? I think I’ll have this shop clean my clothes, which I hope will be handled with more care than this sign.

“Punctuation”; Puzzles.

The title looks strange — on purpose — and it’s no stranger than the random addition or removal of periods, commas, and quotation marks in NYC’s signs. I wrote about the placement of periods in “Stop Full Stop” (http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1364). In this post I expand on the puzzles of punctuation. First up is this photo, which my friend Erica Berenstein sent me:

Can you spot the period?

Can you spot the period?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reluctantly leaving aside the issue of capital letters, I can’t figure out the marketing advantage of placing a period after “dream” and nowhere else. True, the list separates the clauses (subject-verb pairs), but then why place any periods at all in this ad?

Microsoft takes a different approach to punctuation, as you see in these messages that popped up on my screen during a recent update:

And the comma is there because . . .?

And the comma is there because . . .?

 

The first part of the statement seems to be a shortened form of “we are getting things ready,” an independent clause. But if that’s the intended construction, the rules of Standard English don’t allow you to attach the first independent clause to the second (“Please don’t turn off your PC”) with a comma. Another possible interpretation is that “getting things ready” is an introductory participle, in which case the participle should modify the subject of the following clause. The problem with this explanation is that the subject of “please don’t turn off your PC” is an implied “you.” But “you” aren’t getting things ready. Microsoft is, or so it claims. By the way, there’s a period missing after “PC.” With such attention to detail, the upgrade promises to be buggy at best.

Here’s another Microsoft gem:

windows2

 

 

Okay, the words make sense, and the sentence begins with a capital letter. It ends with . . . nothing. No period. No exclamation point. Not even a question mark, which, given the state of internet security these days, would be more than appropriate.

Last one. Can anyone find a reason for these quotation marks?

P1020112

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m stumped. Feel free to send in your theories, properly punctuated, of course!