Category Archives: Now trending

Observing and all too often criticizing language trends

Danger!

We live in dangerous times. In addition to the pandemic, what used to be once-in-a-century weather catastrophes now take place every month or so. But danger comes from more than climate change and viruses, as these signs make clear. First up, a notice affixed to the fence around a motel pool, photographed by my friend Kim:

I can deal with children who splash water all over everyone. I don’t mind an occasional collision with someone who swims laps faster than I do. But if the Carnivorous can’t control themselves in the pool, I’m out of there. Fellow swimmers should not be dinner.

Nor should employees. Jeff sent this photo of a burger restaurant’s sign:

I don’t think minimum wage, or even much more than minimum wage, compensates new hires properly if they have to hop onto the grill or run themselves through a grinder. I prefer a secret ingredient that’s free of human DNA, don’t you?

From Sean:

The image is a bit small, so I’ve retyped the message here: Citizen Disposal Facility. I wonder if that’s where you end up if you don’t pay your taxes in the County of Fairfax?

Also from Sean, an appropriate response to the above sign:

I should probably conclude this post with a disclaimer in order to forestall the spread of cannibalism stories on social media, which would inevitably give rise to anti-cannibalism protests and then to anti-anti-canibalism protests by those who want the freedom to snack on their own elbows. The last two signs come from garbage dumps. The Country of Fairfax opens its facility to citizens who need a place for refuse. The last sign explains how to package refuse (noun, accent on the first syllable, not a verb (accent on the second syllable).

Cannibalism isn’t on the rise, as far as I know, but misinformation is. That’s the real danger these days. Stay safe!

Hiring and Firing

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Recent walks around New York give me hope that the city is rebounding from some pandemic-related woes. Businesses seem to be hiring (and occasionally firing — more on that in a moment) and a new crop of gloriously silly signs have appeared. Nothing personal, sign-writers, but could you please check your dictionaries before hanging a help-wanted notice? Otherwise you end up with something like this:

Who knew that four words could encompass so many mistakes! I’ll skip the skipped subject, because the owners of the store posting this sign are, by implication, the ones who need, well, whatever a delivery personal is. Perhaps it’s what happens to a pregnant patient after nineteen hours of labor. Maybe it’s a supply of toilet paper, left in a package room. Those delivery situations are undeniably personal, but I’m betting the sign-writer meant delivery personnel, which is good news for job-seekers. Personnel is a collective noun, so the store hopes to hire several people to handle delivery.

Which brings me to this sign:

Okay, the word personnel is misspelled, but I can live without a double N. I do object to is. A group of workers, entering individually on their own two feet, deserve the plural verb are.

This one falls into the “so close!” category:

On the bright side, the sign refers to personnel, which is the correct term, correctly spelled. Not on the bright side is deliveries. How exactly do deliveries sign in?

That’s it for hiring. Now for the firing:

The pay may be terrible at the deli where this sign appears every month or so, probably because it’s hard to find a good grilled man who doesn’t take too much time off for visits to a burn clinic.

Parting, personal advice: stay cool!

Dazed and Definitely Confused

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Pollsters these days constantly inform us that we are divided. We can’t seem to agree on anything, they report, except that we do not agree on anything. That may be true (or not — feel free to disagree about agreement). It also may be true that we are simply confused. Certainly this signwriter is:

First of all, if someone is having so much trouble decoding the word FIVE that the numeral is necessary, why use the relatively sophisticated word MAXIMUM? Second, what does FIVE (3) CUSTOMER mean? Don’t answer that. Instead, take a look at this advertisement, specifically the middle caption:

I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what an ORIGINAL REPRODUCTION could possibly be. I have given up, but I invite you to try your hand.

Each of these signs, on the other hand, is perfectly clear. Together, not so much:

The best meaning I can come up with: All roads lead not only to Rome but also to Lake Wallenpaupack Palmyra Township.

If you drive there, or anywhere else, for that matter, be sure you have enough fuel. You never know when you will encounter a pump like this one:

I sympathize with the gas station attendant. There’s an awful lot NOT WORING these days. Perhaps we can all agree on that?

May I Ask a Question?

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Four questions, actually, all simple, all based on photos from the past year. Free subscriptions to this blog to anyone who answers all the questions correctly. (For legal reasons, I should probably point out that subscriptions to this blog are always free.) Okay, here’s the first:

QUESTION 1: What did the deceased former Treasury secretaries call for?

Ready for number 2, which my friend Don sent?

QUESTION 2: Do employees check whether the kids really have gas before handing over free food? If so, how?

Moving on:

QUESTION 3: Can we ever trust Dovere’s pool report again?

Last one, which I admit is somewhat personal because I wrote the book on the left:

QUESTION 4: What logical thread unites these three items?

I am looking forward to your answers. Stay safe!

Signs of Covid, Part 2

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As the pandemic grinds on, it’s increasingly tough to answer simple questions like who? what? and where? — questions these signs unsuccessfully attempt to answer. Take a look at this sign, which was posted in the window of a math-enrichment center:

Where are the instructors, exactly? In your home? I guess you should be glad that your home provides comfort, and you should be REALLY glad that they’re live. The last thing you need is a deceased teacher in your living room.

Then there’s this one:

I wouldn’t mind a Manicure & Pedicure, but HOME CALL makes me think of ET, as in ET phone home. Yeah, I know, I’m being pickier than usual. Maybe I should be pleased that the nail-tender understands that we all need comfort these days. A home call is comfier than a house call.

I don’t think it’s picky to question this sign, though:

Are we talking actual food or virtual? Until yesterday I would have thought that actual was the only possible answer. Then someone paid almost seventy million dollars for “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a “nonfungible token” (NFT), which is an artwork existing only on a computer. Until the computer crashes during the next update, that is. Then it exists as a hole in your bank account, though as I understand it, the payment was in virtual currency, so nothing real was paid for nothing real. I should find the symmetry comforting, but somehow I don’t. Back to the sign: I hope they collected cans of tuna and whatnot in a physical pantry, because real people can’t eat icons from a pantry file.

In closing, this grammarian in the city offers one NFT of her own: a wish, existing here on my computer and speeding wirelessly to yours, that you stay safe and well.

Signs of Covid, Part 1

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A year in, it’s become clear that symptoms of Covid-19 include well intentioned but poorly executed signs. I have collected quite a few, so I’ll spread them over a couple of posts. The first one is a bit late, but I’ll post it anyway because Valentine’s Day should last as long as possible this year, which has been sorely in need of good feeling:

Here’s another emotion-packed message, not quite as upbeat as the previous:

This was on the window of a doctor’s office. I was tempted to call to say that I’d agree to STOP!!!! if the doctor would agree to drop three of the exclamation points. Well, four, because the one after NAME isn’t necessary. Maybe it can be recycled into an apostrophe for CANT?

The previous sign is a little rude, but at least it asks you to control yourself, not others, as this one does:

I have great sympathy for the struggling restaurant industry, but I don’t see myself (or any diner, in fact) pushing people apart who venture too close to each other. It’s my responsibility to MAINTAIN A DISTANCE OF 6FT from OTHER GUESTS, not BETWEEN. Nor should this responsiblity fall to the waiters. Diners, you know the rules. Please follow them. Or, as the person who fashioned the second sign in this post would put it, BEHAVE!!!!

Definitions

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Excited after successfully booking a Covid-vaccination appointment (for eligible New Yorkers, that’s equivalent to rolling dice and having them land on their edges), I suddenly realized that I had forgotten about politics for 14 whole minutes. On Inauguration Day! During the ceremony! I’ll make up for that lapse by posting a few signs. The first two arrived courtesy of my friend Sean.

I’m tempted to call these “Freudian typos” because they capture the deep-seated fears that some of us have about control and negation. But like all terms associated with politics, the definitions are mostly in the mind of the definer. Does the dictionary define socialist and conservative? Yes. Do you know the definitions? If you’re like me, the answer is no.

While I had the Oxford English Dictionary on my screen, I checked politics. The meaning that’s all too relevant these days (“actions concerned with the acquisition or exercise of power, status, or authority”) was pretty far down the list, after, for example, “activities or policies associated with government, especially those concerning the organization and administration of a state.” Lately I’ve had a hard time associating the word organization with any level of government (see dice reference above), but really, it should be there for all our institutions.

I can’t help thinking that this sign, advertising a space the owner hopes to rent to a restaurant, captures the definition of politics most appropriate to our era:

My New Year’s Resolution (late because, you know, the pandemic) is to do all I can to avoid venting in place and instead to look for ways to make things better. Let the new year begin, and let it be safe.

Dictionary, 2020-2021 Edition

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Last year yielded a number of words I wish I hadn’t had to learn and fervently hope not to need much longer. To wit:

pod Formerly: a container, like the inedible green things that peas grow in or, in trendy offices and schools, a partly-enclosed seating area for work or study. Currently: the group you can hang out with indoors and maskless, knowing that everyone’s germs have already mingled. Also a verb, as in “I podded up with my son and his family after I passed quarantine.”

doomscroll An unfortunately apt verb, arising from the fact that nearly everything on our screens these days foretells impending doom in one form or another. An inadvisable practice because if the sky is falling (pretty much the only disaster we haven’t had to worry about in the last 12 months), it will fall whether we obsess about it or not.

Blursday Vague but useful time marker for when you never see anyone or anything new (see pod, doomscroll above).

Murder Hornet As if 2020 weren’t bad enough. And yes, they’re real.

Also real is this sign from the window of a dentist’s office:

Presumably the first option makes you not care that your teeth really need the second.

I could go on (and on and on, see Blursday) but instead I’ll end this post with two words I do NOT understand, as in why anyone would ever select them: X Æ A-12 and !!!!!. The first is the name of Elon Musk and Grimes’s son, the second this deli:

X Æ A-12 is still with us, but !!!!! went out of business long before the pandemic, perhaps because employees couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone. “Hello, you’ve reached !!!!!, may I take your order?” is a little hard to imagine.

Feel free to send me your own candidates for words you wish you didn’t know. Happy Blursday to you, and happy new year, too.

Shopping Guide

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Shopping season, in altered form like everything else in 2020, is upon us. It seems appropriate to warn you that the appearance of certain words automatically raises the asking price, though not necessarily the quality. Take a look:

Describe anything with a British-sounding word, such as bespoke, and you can add at least 20% to the price. Even after deducting 10% for spelling (dissapoint), the store still comes out ahead. Same with this photo:

Chemists can charge much more than pharmacists, and this store has both. The chemists are presumably in Britain and selling their products in a Manhattan pharmacy. Or something like that.

Old-looking words also up the bill:

The shopkeeper (not shoppekeeper) thinks you’ll read this sign and picture yourself wearing a hoop skirt or a tricorn hat. (I’m betting the store owner, like me, is a little fuzzy about history.) Back to language: Double the P in shop and the prices double too. The E probably adds another 5%.

My pet peeve (one of about a million, I admit):

Purveyors? Somebody memorized a vocabulary list and by golly is going to use it! If sellers get $1 for whatever the specialty is, a purveyor deserves $2, right?

Last and maybe least (though it’s a race to the bottom):

Curated? I’m happy to have an art museum curate its collection. But if our favorites in the snack-food category are curated, they’re overpriced.

Moral of the story: Buyer beware. You beware, too, of prices and most of all, of Covid-19.

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