Category Archives: Now trending

Observing and all too often criticizing language trends

An Attentive Pedestrian

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Readers with sharp eyes and a keen sense of humor often send me photos of signs they’ve spotted around the city. These are from Constance, an attentive pedestrian whose witty observations brightened my day.

First up is this gem:

Should wheelchair users head in the opposite direction or move backwards in the direction indicated by the arrow?

Now to the river:

The caption on the sign is rather small, so I’ll reproduce it here: “For your safety please keep to the right.” Are pedestrians expected to balance on the railing or dive off the walkway? And how does either option enhance your safety?

Onward to a shopping district:

Is this sign the reason I see so many discarded masks on the sidewalk? Can a mask, or a mask-wearer, sue for being denied entry?

Have these muddled messages given you a headache? If so, this sign will probably not help:

How far away is the Pharmacy when it’s not on lunch break?

Please feel free to send me your answers, along with photos of silly signs you’ve encountered.

Traffic Jam on the Information Highway

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Signs and labels are supposed to offer information, but sometimes the message doesn’t reach its destination. Take a look at this ice cream container I bought recently:

I admit I’d never given much thought to where the cherries in Cherry Vanilla ice cream came from until I read this label’s proud claim to country-harvested fruit. Ever loyal to my urban home, I hesitated before dropping the package into my cart, wondering whether I should search for ice cream made with city-harvested cherries. Unfortunately, Second Avenue is not rife with orchards. Even Orchard Street on the Lower East Side is treeless these days. So I bought the product, reasoning that the label’s reference to vanilla and cherry flavor with other natural flavors and cherry pieces implies more lab-harvesting than anything else, and the lab could indeed be in my home city.

Onward to Broadway, courtesy of my friend Orli:

As Orli pointed out, the construction of this sentence depicts Audra McDonald as packed with suspense. Anyone who’s ever seen her perform knows that Ms. McDonald is packed with talent, which no amount of suspense can replace. I, for one, plan to buy a ticket.

Now to the front door of a medical office:

Verbally granted access? Um … okay, if you say so ( and you literally must, according to this sign). Yet I can’t help wondering what other type of granted access doesn’t measure up at this location. Are buzzers banned? If I enter through the door an exiting, silent patient holds open, will I be thrown out?

As always, theories welcome. And as we approach whatever wave of the pandemic is next, I hope you stay safe!

This Is Not a Post

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It’s a promulgation, the fanciest near-synonym of post I could find. Fancy, by the way, is today’s theme. Here’s a paragraph from a catalogue mistakenly delivered to my mailbox:

I leafed through the catalogue but didn’t notice any serpentine candlesticks or large-scale hummingbirds (and I definitely wouldn’t buy any if I did). Instead I focused on expressive materiality, which means . . . well, what does it mean? I’m thinking quadruple pricing, but maybe that’s just me.

Onward and upward to this sign on a recently completed apartment building:

To protect the guilty, I try not to include company names, but I will tell you that the building has “Manor” in its name, a word equal in snootiness to Sculpted in Stature. All sorts of construction machinery littered the site for a year or so, but no stone-sculpting tools with which to carve Stature. And how does one carve Stature? Does that even have a meaning?

Skip the misspelled word on line three and go directly to the fourth line of this sign:

All this to describe paint! If only one person is making it (the sign says craftsman, not craftsmen), small wonder that the product is made only in small batches. Then there’s formulation and curated collection — words I reckon cost an extra hundred each, per can. Or jar, or whatever they sell curated paint in. Grecian urns? Space capsules? Something expensive, that’s for sure — unlike this completely free promulgation about snobbery.

Oxymoronic

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I’m tempted to drop three letters from this post’s title when I contemplate these photos. First up is a label on a pair of jeans I bought this weekend. (Those aren’t bullet holes, in case you’re worried, but rather the remains of the label fastener.)

The jeans fit fine, but I still don’t know what to make of the product description.

Next up: the front and back labels of some shampoo my friend Catherine bought for her cat, Lionel:

So far, so good. Apples and honey sound pleasing, though I don’t know whether these ingredients appeal to cats. Speaking of ingredients:

As I’m sure you know, ingredients must be listed on labels in order, from most to least. Question for the manufacturer: What’s the main ingredient in your waterless shampoo? Answer: Um . . .

I snapped this one a couple of years ago:

Sidewalks inside? And they cost only $10? Even allowing for inflation, that’s a pretty good deal.

Directionless

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Polls show that many of us feel adrift and directionless. I sometimes share that feeling, especially when I see signs like the ones in this post. The first one stands in a narrow opening between the Great Hall and the Egyptian wing of the Met:

Who knew Jean-Paul Sartre made signs for museums?

Here’s a puzzle for motorists:

It may not be evident in the photo, but it should be to motorists, that directly behind these signs is Lake Wallenpaupack. Do drivers really have to be told to turn instead of plunge?

In the same vein:

If you overthink it — my specialty, by the way — the sign asks you to be in two places at the same time. Modern life often demands multitasking, but this is a whole other ballgame, one you can’t win.

You can’t win this one, either:

These two signs stand in front of the United Nations. I spotted them a few years ago and have checked periodically to see whether an attack of sanity broke out and someone took at least one of the signs down. So far, motorists are still being told to do the impossible.

As are we all. It seems to me that what really unites nations is this: nobody knows where to go, how to get there, and when to stop. Who knew street signs mirrored life?

Expensive Words

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Every trip to the store reminds me that inflation isn’t just for balloons. I don’t pretend to understand the economic forces involved, but I do know some things that inflate the cost of food. Here’s one:

General rule: If you double the P in “shop,” you double the price. Which is understandable, because it’s expensive to import food from the 16th century.

Another general rule is “fancy language equals fancy prices,” especially when the words are associated with Britain:

“Made to order” isn’t cheap, but it is cheaper than “bespoke.” I would deduct 10% from the price for misspelling “disappoint,” however.

A variation of the fancy language rule sets higher prices to anything described by a three-syllable word that most people have to look up in a dictionary:

A “distributor” can’t charge as much as a “purveyor.” Oh, and “chefs” pay more than “cooks.”

To sum up: If you’re on a tight budget, stay away from shoppes that are purveyors of bespoke fruit baskets.

Logic-Challenged

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It’s almost August, which is as good an excuse as any for why logic has exited through some sort of universal escape hatch and left us in a complete muddle.

Speaking of the universe, my friend Constance alerted me to this headline:

Science fiction multi-verses aside, logic dictates that “the universe,” by definition, encompasses everything, and therefore everything has to be in it. Or, as Constance notes in her email: Where else would a galaxy be? In a closet? In my backyard?

Next are some dividers I spotted while shopping for a greeting-card:

Shouldn’t the photo on the right read “for anyone who’s not funny?”

Now turn your attention to the back of my son’s car:

To any mathematician reading this: I’d appreciate your explaining what “partial zero” amounts to.

Moving on:

How can Paper House have a “New Home” if it’s been there “Since 1976”? What’s the time frame for becoming an “old home”?

Fingers crossed that Covid-variant outbreaks will soon give way to an outbreak of rationality, just for a change of pace. In the meantime, stay cool and, if at all possible, logical.

Happy In(ter)dependence Day

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Today Americans celebrate Independence Day. Barbecues aren’t an option in my dense, cement-covered portion of New York City, and I generally go to sleep around the time Macy’s sets off its first firework. Lacking traditional outlets, this year I’m dedicating my holiday to grammar. (Do I know how to have a good time or what?)

An obscure grammar rule holds that collective nouns (jury, class, committee, etc.) are singular when everyone in the group is united in performing the same action (The drama class meets every Wednesday) and plural when the group is divided or acting individually (The cast are writing “Best Actor” acceptance speeches). This convention is followed more often in the Britain than in the US. Americans are more likely to employ a singular verb (The cast is writing) than pair a collective noun with a plural verb. To American ears, “the cast are” just sounds wrong.

Lately I’ve been wondering if this usage mirrors an ideal embedded in the fundamental fabric of the country — in its very name, which declares that individual entities (States) are United. The same ideal appears in America’s self-definition (melting pot) and motto (E Pluribus Unum — “Out of many, one“). The preamble to the Constitution begins “We the people,” emphasizing unity.

Of course, the people granting themselves rights in the Constitution excluded an awful lot of Americans. In the preamble, they acknowledged that their work was flawed, declaring that they were striving for a Union that was more perfect — not actually perfect. And despite their shortcomings, the Founders’ goals were worthy: “to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

With all this in mind, I suggest that instead of focusing on the Declaration of Independence this July 4th, we celebrate the preamble to the United States Constitution. At the very least, its minimal length (52 words) allows more time for the barbecue-inclined. At best, the preamble may prompt us to rededicate ourselves to interdependence, to the notion that what’s good for all of us is good for each of us. Perhaps then this divisive era will become less so, and pairing a singular verb with the collective noun, American citizenry, will be both accurate and grammatically correct. Happy July 4th!

During the Pandemic

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From time to time I catch myself saying during the pandemic while talking about some event in the past two years. But during the pandemic is, in fact, now. Covid is still with us, despite the fact that many people, myself included, really want this disease to go far, far away and stay there.

I favor precision in language, so once I noticed the problem with during the pandemic, I cast about for better wording. I tried during lockdown. But that phrase is awfully vague, as restrictions have come and gone and sometimes come again in various parts of the United States and around the world.

I had a brief fling with when Broadway closed down, but people who don’t follow theater were mystified. I considered when there were refrigerated morgue trucks parked in my neighborhood. That’s an accurate description of the spring of 2020 in New York City, but it’s kind of a conversation killer. No pun intended.

For a while I marked pandemic time by referring to waves, as in “During the first wave I played way too much sudoku.” But New York’s first wave — tsunami, really — isn’t aligned with the first wave elsewhere. Plus, by now I can’t remember which wave we’re in. Third? Fourth? Lately I’ve relied on references to variants and shots, as in “right before Omicron” and “between my first two vaccinations and Delta.” Those expressions are imprecise, to be sure, but for the moment they’re the best I’ve got.

What to do? This sign sums up the situation:

Practicing has several meanings, one of which implies a work in progress. When it comes to Covid and our response to it, that’s where — actually, when — we are.

Animation

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Disney isn’t the only company infusing life into inanimate objects. (Did you know that inanimate used to be a verb meaning “to infuse life”? Now it’s an adjective meaning “without life.” Curious how language works.) As these signs illustrate, anyone can animate an object, though the results are somewhat unpredictable.

First up is a sign my friend Catherine spotted:

I wonder whether the dresses stride or billow out. Also, when the dresses . . . come out of the fitting room, are there people in them? If not, what happens to the people in the fitting room when their dresses . . . come out? Note to self: shop at this store only while wearing pants.

I usually remove a brand name to avoid embarrassing the business responsible for unintentional hilarity, but Heinz should know better. Take a look at this label:

Heinz Ketchup is grown, not made? Really? Is there a plant with little ketchup bottles on it? Do they start out as one ouncers and reach maturity at, say, a quart?

This last sign doesn’t animate the apartments it references, but I hope it animates those who are delivering the 2 – 4 BRs. They’ll need to step lively:

How much does an average bedroom weigh? How large a vehicle do you need to deliver 2 – 4 of them? Does from $3.4M include postage? Inquiring minds want to know.

You’ll have to excuse me now. I’m off to fill Gertrude (my kettle) and put her on Ronald (my stove). If I’m going to be animated enough to get something done today, I need a cup of Joe.