Category Archives: Snarky Remarks on Grammar

Picky observations on grammar and writing style

Heatwave Relief

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The air resembles tan soup this morning, as the heatwave in New York City staggers off. I’d be staggering, too, without the comic relief provided by friends who sent me these signs. The first is from Joselia:


I hope the cops are looking to arrest whoever “we” is before the chainsaw comes out.

The next two are from Ellie, who lives in a cooler spot (Canada). Please send a cold front with the next set of photos, Ellie. Here’s the first:

Call me lazy, but the thought of trekking to China from Canada just to save walking up or down some stairs is not appealing. And how is that a convenience for wheelchair users?

Another Ellie-gem:

The original caption for this photo questioned whether there was any way to make sense of the display. The syntax suggests that “whole” is a noun. I’m just hoping it’s not a misspelling of “hole,” in which case the first person to walk on that carpet is going to take a plunge. Another theory: The empty window on the right is a fill-in-the-blank. If that’s correct, I’d be happy to spend $99 to carpet my street and a few adjacent avenues. Much more elegant, and quieter, too.

Ellie shared a photo taken by her friend John, but my computer stubbornly refused to save it. The image showed an empty carton labeled “invisible tape.” Maybe the invisible part explains my computer problem: The photo is there, but no one can see it.

The last is from me, snapped during a recent visit to England:

I’m not sure about the “get sun” part, but otherwise, it’s spot on.

Sign-Spotters

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What would I do without the sharp eyes and excellent grammar skills of my friends? This post is fashioned from the silly signs and ads they spotted. First up features a rather unappetizing menu item, noted by my friend Helen:

Liced?

I’m sure that she ordered an insect-free beverage. Or at least I hope so!

Catherine found this one:

Can other types of snakes relax there?

I imagine a “rattlesnake hammock” as a long, narrow sling, perhaps with some curves built in. I hope there’s a special pocket for the rattle. Imagine trying to warn off predators only to discover that the tip of your tail is caught on the cloth!

My friend Marlene discovered these two beauties on an academic website and sent me the links. I neglected to take a screen shot, so I’ll simply quote. Here’s the first:

TWO YEAR OLD TEACHER NEEDED

About a week later, this appeared:

THREE YEAR OLD TEACHER TO START ASAP

As Marlene noted, “They upped the age, probably because there were no inquiries from two-year-old teachers.” The school certainly sounds desperate! If you’re three and jobless, consider applying.

And if you notice any other linguistic absurdities, please send them ASAP, regardless of how old you are.

Please Explain

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Every once in a while — okay, every day — I find a sign that puzzles me. I like puzzles, mostly, but I also like answers. With that in mind, I’m posting four signs, hoping readers will enlighten me. First up:

Does this mean it’s okay to garbage somewhere else?

Another question for another sign-maker:

My first theory about this sign: a “pre-action” is a thought. But then I realized that thinking is itself an action. That put me in chicken-egg territory, wondering which came first, the pre-action or the thought about the pre-action. What do you think? (And while you’re thinking, are you pre-acting?)

One from a beauty salon:

Is there an analog perm? If I go digital, will I have fingers in my hair, and if so, whose?

Last query:

Is there an epidemic of cave-ins caused by sloppy posture? Or is “Do Not Lean” just mean? I’m leaning (pun intended) toward answering yes to the second question and no to the first, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

Explanations welcome.

A Little Help

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The Beatles got “by with a little help” from their friends, and so do I. These signs come from a cadre of alert observers. Presented with thanks, first to Sharon:

How polite to say, “Please do not become alarmed” immediately before asking passengers to “please use the button marked ‘Alarm.'” Nice to know there’s a “telephone ‘if furnished.'” Impossible to decipher, but nice to know.

Now another, courtesy of Jacqueline:

I have never visited that part of the world, but if I ever do, I will be sure to spend “less than tow nights.”

Another, this time from Don:

What’s with the S and its double duty? Labor-saving? Eco-conscious?

Now a menu from another friend via her friend in Madrid, both of whom prefer not to be named:

This one is a little hard to read (in more ways than one!) so I’ll type the most important line: “Salad with all it must have.” That’s how I always prepare salad. Don’t you?

One more, from my friend Marlene: an ad on Craigslist for a “2 year old Teacher on Long Island (Deer Park).” I don’t have an image for this one, but I’ll let you make your own, complete with a toddler, her grade book, and a bunch of chalk. I wonder whether the school offers free diapers to its faculty? Time-outs for tantrums? Bibs?

Et Tu, NYT?

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I once offered my students extra credit for every grammar error they found in print. Fairly soon I was forced to exclude mistakes from a couple of newspapers. Had I not done so, every kid would have received an A+. It was just too easy! But The New York Times was different. Finding a poorly worded sentence there was tough — then. Now, I’m not so sure.

Here’s a pull-quote that should have been pulled before it hit the screen or page:

Gentile?

What a difference one extra letter makes! I’m not going to speculate about the nature of “gentile” affirmations or how they differ from Jewish affirmations. Instead, I will proceed to another lapse in grammatical judgment.

This pull-quote comes from an obituary:

Surf that was used for D-Day?

I hadn’t realized that it was possible to “use” a surf, let alone “for D-Day.” Misplaced modifier, anyone?

One more, from my archives:

Printed before Amazon selected sites in Virginia and New York.

“Square foot modern.” A new architectural style?

In fairness to my local paper, I have to forgive the editors who overlooked these mistakes. No one’s perfect. As we all know, to err is humane.

Twenty Something

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Regarding the title of this post: “Twenty,” because that’s the number trending on signs around town. “Something,” because the message of each of these signs means something. I just don’t know what. Take this sign (please, please take it away):

I like a discount as much as the next person, but I’m a little hesitant to buy a “damaged boxes item.” And no, there was nothing under or near the sign to give me context. No damaged boxes, no item.

Here I know what they’re selling, sort of, but there’s still a problem:

Actually, several problems. Once you say “Coca-Cola,” doesn’t that narrow things down, making “beverage” redundant? Are there Coca-Cola sandwiches? Cookies? (Forget I asked. I don’t want to know.) My real issue is with “200Z,” which looks like a serial number. Given the nearby illustration of more sugary beverage than anyone should ever drink, I’m assuming that “200Z” needs a space, as in “20 OZ,” the abbreviated form of “20 ounces.”  I’m not sure whether the pizza crust and sauce under the pair of cheese slices are included in the $5.95 price, but at least the store inserted the hyphen correctly.

I saved the best (actually the worst) for last:

If you hope to meet a regular customer, your odds are 4 out of 5, I guess, because  “today” has “20% new clients.” Actually, new “client’s.” I was tempted to erase the hyphen with my sleeve, but I can’t spend all day deleting apostrophes from NYC signs. I have better things to do, like figure out what the shop offers. The part I glimpsed through the window left me clueless. Besides, the sign may be referring to something belonging to the 20%, in which case the possessive is appropriate.  The only problem, aside from the fact that there’s no indication of what’s possessed, is that the apostrophe should appear after the letter S (the plural form), because “20%” implies more than one person. They can’t chop up one person!  I think at least twenty-something percent of us can agree on that point.

 

Happy Halloween!

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Before or after you hit the trick-or-treat trail, take a minute to enjoy  these holiday photos. This one comes from my friend Milton:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Punking” seems perfectly suited to the “trick” part of the Halloween slogan, don’t you think?

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is also a good fit for this holiday. The Morgan Library has a fine exhibit celebrating the 200th anniversary of the monster, who, by the way, has no name and is actually much less monstrous than most of the human characters in the book. (Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who sewed body parts together and animated the creature.) I learned a lot from the exhibition, including this information about early theatrical performances of the classic work:

Leave it to Mary Shelley, inventive in so many ways, to add an apostrophe and the letter S to a row of hyphens to create a possessive form of “the unnameable.”

Once Halloween is over and you’re fighting sugar rush and paying dental bills, you might plan for another holiday, one that tends to be stressful. Show this sign — sent by my friends Pilar, Naomi, and Aracelly — to any of your unruly offspring:

“Behave or I’ll drop you off.” Simple but effective! But before your kids call Children’s Protective Services, be sure to explain that you’re just punking them.

What Are You Reading?

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I was the kind of kid who fell down the stairs because I didn’t want to stop reading whatever book I’d just taken out of the library. Then I became an English teacher and a writer. So you’ll understand why my heart went pitter-patter when I saw this on a forklift outside a large food market in my neighborhood:

I pass this store often, so I can report with confidence that every forklift has a “literature packet” strapped to its vertical shaft. I’ve spent a lot of time speculating about the contents of the “literature packet,” wondering what genres are represented and whether the literature changes with the seasons. This being autumn, I’d choose Frost’s “After Apple-Picking”  or “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, possibly the best poem ever written about food larceny. (It’s the one where the speaker confesses that he has “eaten the plums” that someone was “probably saving for breakfast.”)  Or maybe the packet contains the script of “Babette’s Feast” or the Christmas dinner scene from Great Expectations.  Yes, I know, the “literature” is probably operating instructions, but a grammarian can dream, can’t she?

Less appealing is this headline from The New York Times, the newspaper I read every day and which, in my opinion, should know better than to write this:

According to the dictionary, a “drove” is “a herd or flock” or “a large mass of people acting in unison.” Therefore, “Zimbabweans” can turn out in “droves,” but not “Zimbabwe.” Unless a mass of countries with that name  somehow didn’t make it onto the map?

Hanging by a thread onto the theme of this post (that you have to read the sign is my only justification, other than the fact that this one is too good to omit) is an ad for Crocs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend Trent snapped this photo while on vacation. He said thought it might be for “those participating in hop-scotch tournaments” who need a spare Croc “in case of a “blow-out.” Excellent theory. As for me, I wonder whether someone taking advantage of this deal ends up with five shoes, as depicted in the sign, or five pairs. The first would be quite useful for those of us who have five feet — huge, untapped market there! — and the second for people who don’t feel their shoe supply is adequate unless they can cover every weekday with a different pair of Crocs. I’m not in either category, and I strongly suspect not many readers fit Trent’s theory either. If only this sign came with a literature packet! Then we’d know. If there are any “droves of Croc” reading this post, please feel free to enlighten us. In the meantime, happy reading.

What’s Open?

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When my son was little, we couldn’t walk down our block without having the baker rush over with a piece of bread, the dry cleaner offer candy, and the deli clerk donate a cookie. Toddler paradise! When I walk down that same street with my granddaughter, her experience is different. So many stores have closed! E-commerce and, I’ve read, some unwise rent laws have led to a surge in vacancies. What’s open, and when? These signs offer absolutely no help:

Given this timetable, I expect another empty storefront soon. Here’s another:

I’m happy about the “Grand Open”; at least the storefront isn’t vacant. I do wonder whether the $29 price includes both feet. I also wonder how long after the “grand open” I’ll see this sort of sign:

Near where the “out business” used to be is this sign, professionally printed and posted all over a building under construction:

According to the dictionary, “amenities” are “desirable or useful features of a building or a place.”  This sign is okay — grammatically, at least. Winding through scaffolding to play billiards or to sit near a communal wine cellar before your apartment is constructed is not okay, at least for me. But if you don’t care, go for it.

Although the word is correctly used in the last sign, I couldn’t help thinking about another definition of “amenities”: “social courtesies.” Sadly, everything I see in our public life shows me that this sort of “amenities” is absolutely NOT “now open.” If we can’t find our way back to civility, I fear that soon we will also be “out business,” and not just from 11 to 12 each day.

Grammarians in Other Cities

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New York is generally the city  this grammarian is in, but not always.  On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I found myself puzzled by more than politics:

This sign was in the window of a shop specializing in shipping and receiving packages. At first I thought the clerks were tired of inquiries about a service they did not provide, but the walls were lined with mail boxes. My next theory was that the sign would disappear when the mail showed up. Over the course of four days, though, the sign remained, even at night. My third and final thought — though I’m open to suggestions — is that this sign is an existential statement (“The mail is not here because it, like life, is an illusion”).

Before I returned to New York to retrieve my all-too-existent mail, mostly ads and bills, I walked around the capital. Tiring, I headed for the metro on 12th Street.  I was heartened by the fact that I was currently on 13th. Only one block to go, I thought. Wrong! Here’s what I saw at the next corner:

That’s it for Washington. Friendly grammarians in other cities sent me these gems. From Ellie in Montreal:

One can only hope that this fellow’s brick work is better than his spelling of “chimney.”

Here’s a contribution from Don in San Francisco:

I do hope that the “ethnic ingredients” have been cooked into some sort of meal, rather than presented as a set of separate, grocery-store packages. Ditto for the “can vegetables.” And while we’re on the subject of “can vegetables,” is that something the restaurant really wants to brag about?  Or is this some sort of “truth in labeling” requirement?  Given that both halves of the sign are labeled “lunch & dinner,” the offerings are strange. I guess you could enjoy them on a half-street, next to a fireplace with a clean chimniey, as you read no mail.