Category Archives: Snarky Remarks on Grammar

Picky observations on grammar and writing style

Bad Jelly

4 Replies

A while ago a friend sent me a photo that perfectly captures the national mood, or so it seems to me judging by what I read in the paper:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m in a “gripe” mood also. So settle in with a little jelly, fellow complainers, and express your own annoyances. Here are three of mine:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has long been my position that ‘n (intended as a contraction of “and”) is a grunt, not a word. Here it appears with double quotation marks. My advice: If you’re going to butcher a contraction, at least use the proper punctuation to do so. In this case, place an apostrophe before and after the n to indicate that a and d have been dropped.

Next gripe:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a grammarian, not a mathematician, but shouldn’t “Three Cheese Mac & Cheese” be made with three types of cheese? Yet the second line specifies that the dish is “made with American and Swiss Cheese.” I checked the ingredient list, which lists no other identifiable dairy product. I thought about crossing out “three” and penciling in “two,” but I decided that customers, unlike label makers, can count.

One more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t usually bother with spelling errors, but this one I can’t ignore. Unless they’re trying to exclude everyone except Chicago and Boston baseball professionals, the word is “socks.” Second, even if the sign does refer to the White Sox and Red Sox, you don’t need the final “s.” “Sox” is a plural term. Which makes me wonder what you call a single major leaguer from one of these teams. I can’t imagine an announcer introducing “the next sock at bat.” Baseball fans, feel free to enlighten me, despite the fact that I’ve clearly eaten too much “gripe jelly.”  I think I’ll stick with plain peanut butter for a while, at least until I get my perspective back.

Oxymorons, Again

3 Replies

Consistency seems to be out of style these days. A while ago I posted a couple of signs that contradict themselves (See “Oxymorons” at http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1195). I keep finding more, such as this one, which hangs over the entrance to a parking garage:

Quik park slowly. Got that?

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I know that “Quik” is part of the name, but you’d think the owner would move “quik” away from “slowly,” if only to keep the attention of a potential customer who’s in a hurry. And is it too much to ask for a “c” before the “k”?

A penny to anyone who can explain what “shop and save for free” means, in the context of bakeware or anything else:

Shop for free?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not to mention whether (and where) you should brake your vehicle:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or where you should shop, and for what:

A sidewalk inside?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Either the slabs of cement are ten bucks each or the store is having the equivalent of a garage sale in the dining room. Either way, something’s odd. Bottom line: People often think we New Yorkers are rude (and sometimes, we are). But mostly we’re just confused.

A Fog of Words

2 Replies

The city is sitting in a soup of gray fog as I write this post, much like the meaning of these earnest but incomprehensible signs. First up is from a nearby market that prides itself on fair-traded, locally grown, never-met-a-chemical produce:

Whose safety?

 

Okay, I get that skates inside a store can lead to crashes and possible puncture wounds from organic asparagus. I can also imagine that stepping on a stray artichoke with a bare foot might lead to a deadly collision with a pile of kale or a tub of alfalfa sprouts. But why is a shirt necessary for safety? Perhaps male customers showing off the effects of all those hours with a personal trainer elicit attacks from envious (or lustful) fellow shoppers. And pets? Is the store owner assuming that your poodle, well behaved in your house and on the street, will go berserk and bite you upon seeing the dog biscuit display? What the sign ought to say, I imagine, is that the shirtless, shoeless, pet-ful and skated customers may annoy and, by a long stretch of the imagination, endanger the staff and other shoppers.

The next sign features a word that hasn’t yet made it into the Oxford English Dictionary:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “clean up” part is clear, even without the smear of what I hope is dirt that a passerby added to a strategic spot on the sign. But what does “leash-curb” mean? Tie Fido to the sidewalk edge? Limit (curb) the length of extendable leashes? I’d support that one in a heartbeat, having tripped or leapt over many a twenty-foot tether.  My guess is that the hyphen is a comma that unwisely flattened out and floated up.

One more, for fans of beauty products:

 

 

Are the “50+ ingredients” this store “won’t sell” the appositive of “the finest ingredients” cited in the first line? I can just imagine the manager declaring that “this is the best hand cream in the world, so we don’t carry it and never will.” I’m tempted to go into the store with a list of 50+ ingredients I won’t buy.  That is, I would be tempted if I had the tiniest clue about or interest in body-care ingredients. By the way, I inserted a hyphen to link “body” to “care.” Without the hyphen, the “body” may conceivably be attached to “50+,” in which case you can’t shop here if you’re AARP-eligible.

No Time Like the Future

7 Replies

Does the English language have a future – tense, that is? Most grammarians keep things simple and answer yes. A few, though, see the future as an aspect of present tense, based on the fact that the verb form does not change in a sentence about what has yet to happen, as it does when, for example, “walk” turns into “walked” in a sentence about the past. To talk about the future, the main verb simply acquires “shall” or “will” — helping verbs, in this sort of analysis.

For the record, I think future tense does exist. But I’m intrigued by the philosophical implications of the other way of thinking – that the future, as we conceive it, is solely an aspect of what is happening right now. From that perspective, present actions carry more weight. Or, as thousands upon thousands of coffee mugs put it, “The past is gone. The future has yet to come. Only the present moment is real.” Or something like that.

I thought about future tense when I encountered this sign in the emergency entrance to a hospital:

Will be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As everyone who’s ever rushed to an emergency room knows, ten minutes of terror precede five hours or so of tedium (if you’re lucky). So I had a lot of time to think about the statement that “the nursing station will be on the left.”  Why not “is”?  Why future tense? Are workers scurrying around with hammers and dry wall, constructing the nursing station as you open the door?

Eventually I realized that the sign speaks to the state of mind of the people who are reading it. Most likely they’re scared because of what’s happening in the present moment and hoping that the moments, hours, days or even years to come will be better.  No general-purpose sign can promise that everything will be all right — not in a hospital. Uncertainty is king. But the sign supplies one small concrete truth to hang onto. Follow the hallway, and the nursing station — and the help it provides — will be on the left. Not much, maybe, but in that moment, that present moment, enough to keep you going.

Logical Questions

6 Replies

Signs and labels typically hit you with a message that you can absorb quickly. But this quality comes with a built-in problem; you have to infer the context and the implied or possible extension of what’s actually there. Which brings me to these signs, and the logical questions they inspire. The first is a label on a soda bottle:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dieters’ delight, right? But why highlight “per 8 fl oz serving”? Do 4 ounces have half the calorie count? If so, what’s half of zero? What about 16 ounces? Does the number jump to, say, 1000 calories because the calories from the first 8 ounces are packed into the next 8, the way a “first thirty days free” subscription suddenly increases to $40/month thereafter? I bought this beverage anyway because I wanted club soda, but I would have been more comfortable with a label reading “no calories because it’s just water and a couple of minerals.” Honesty being the best policy and all.

Next up is a Valentine’s Day special, a bit late:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand “cookie cakes,” which I imagine combine two food groups, cookies and cakes, similar to “cronuts,” the food-fad that mixed doughnuts and croissants.  No need to discuss “heart shaped,” which is obvious. What gets me about the sign is the asterisk and its explanation. What on earth does “full legal available” mean?  If the cookie cakes were available until “Feb 21,” would they be totally illegal? Half legal and half illegal? Unavailable?

Last but not least:

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first I thought that “pick-app” was, in fact, an app. And it is! Download this code, and you’ve got a lifetime supply of pick-up lines to throw at prospective romantic partners. (No kidding. Really.) But if the sign refers to that app, how does “delivery” fit in? Does the app deliver the line, so you don’t have to say anything? Or does “delivery” refer to results —  a date or a phone number?

Theories welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grammarian in a Different City

2 Replies

I spent the last two weeks as a grammarian in three different cities — Madrid, Granada, and London. Far be it for me to write about Spanish signs, even those translated into English. How could I criticize, given that I wrote the Spanish equivalent of “pitifully, I can’t meet you for dinner” in response to an invitation from a friend? Nor would I dare take on the British. More than two centuries after the colonies declared independence, some Americans — including me — still harbor the idea that English in the Mother Country is superior.

I did notice one or two signs in London, on the window of a shop selling bespoke umbrellas and other, more unusual merchandise:

Paging James Bond.

Paging James Bond.

 

 

I go to this shop every time I’m in London, not to buy but to gape. I haven’t yet had the nerve to ask how “dagger canes” differ from “swordsticks,” but if I did, I’m sure one of the extremely helpful employees would explain. Nor have I glimpsed any “life preservers,” unless umbrellas sturdy enough to protect you in a flash flood rate that designation. What interests me about this sign is the punctuation — commas after the first two items and a period (“full stop,” in British English) after the last. Contemporary sign-makers on either side of the Atlantic seldom bother to insert commas. Periods, on the other hand, are trendy. (See “Stop Full Stop” at  http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1364 for more on this subject). But commas and periods together in a sign? Unprecedented, at least for me.

My first thought was that this punctuation reflected a different era, as indeed the store itself does:

Late of Saville Place.

Late of 1, 2, & 3 Saville Place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, the sign understates the store’s age; it was “estd” in 1830. I have no basis for comparison, though, as I was unable to find other signs from the same era.

However, conventions of language tend to be supported by some sort of rationale. I considered the sign again and decided that the commas may be separating items in a list, which ends with a period. In that case, though, I’d expect a conjunction (probably “and”) before “swordsticks.”  Furthermore, I wouldn’t expect to find a comma preceding the conjunction — not in Britain. That last comma usually shows up in American lists but not in British lists. It’s called “the Oxford comma” in Britain and, sometimes, “the Harvard comma” in the United States. (Perhaps “ivy comma” should be the universal, trans-Atlantic term?)  I finally concluded that the comma between “dagger canes” and “swordsticks” substitutes for the conjunction. There’s a comma before the implied “and” because “and” isn’t on the sign. This theory makes sense to me, but I’m open to other interpretations.

Regardless of punctuation, do visit this shop if you’re ever in London. The life you preserve may be your own.

When?

1 Reply

Common wisdom holds that “it’s all in the timing.” Fine. But what time are we talking about? Here’s a sign I saw on the window of a bar:

So polite! And a semicolon, too.

So polite! And a semicolon, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The image is a little blurry, so I’ll repeat the message here: “Please respect our neighbors; try to avoid loud talking after a certain time. Merci. Amelie.” The courtesy is impressive, and the punctuation flawless. My only problem: When is “after a certain time”? Noon? Midnight? Now?

Here’s another, posted on the door of a construction shed:

Use it permanently.

Temporarily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think we can all agree that walking into “heavy demolition” is a bad idea. I’d have no problem with “Do not use this doorway until further notice” or simply “Go Away! Heavy Demolition!” What I don’t get is the concept of “temporarily.” Can you use this doorway permanently? If there’s heavy demolition going on, “permanently” for anyone who uses the doorway may be a very short period of time.  Amelie, the bar owner, would probably say, “Do not use this doorway until a certain time.”

Speaking of time, it’s time for my vacation. Woods out — temporarily.

 

Take a break from debate

3 Replies

Pretty much everyone I know has been debating The Debate since it ended, analyzing every facial expression, body movement, and comment. It’s time to take a break!  Apply your analytical skills to these signs and answer the questions that follow. Send me your answers, but don’t expect any prizes. Sign number one:

Not an ordinary palm.

No ordinary palms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions: Is your palm special? Is it worth ten dollars?

On to sign number two:

Shorten your doctors here.

Shorten your doctors here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What sort of alteration does this shop offer to professionals? Does it nip in a billowy lawyer, cut up a surgeon, or dye a mortician? OR – Do they think other shops employ amateur tailors?

And sign number three, from an awning on a busy Manhattan street:

 

Serving Manhattan's farm animals.

Serving Manhattan’s farm animals.

 

Does East 74th Street qualify as “country”? Do the proprietors believe that farmers will bring their livestock there? Or do the proprietors need “professional alteration” (see sign number three)?

Now for my favorite:

What's a "tworl"?

What’s a “tworl”?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this a line from “Jabberwocky”? If not, what does it mean?

Bad Mood

5 Replies

New Yorkers are not normally celebrated for their cheery outlook, and current events haven’t improved the mood around the city. So this photo, sent by my friend Catherine, seems particularly relevant right now:

All natural ingredients!

All natural ingredients.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gripe jelly – gives a whole new slant on “you are what you eat,” doesn’t it? If your New Year’s resolution was to be more peaceful,  you may want to avoid the jelly at this Lexington Avenue deli.

Moving on, here’s a sign from a truck parked on East 78th Street:

I can break my remote all by myself, thanks.

Remote control breaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was under the impression that most people break the remote all by themselves. I do it all the time, usually by dropping it in a bowl of whatever I’m eating while I watch TV. But if this sign is accurate, you can hire someone else for that chore. Busy New Yorkers, take note. Alternate interpretation: If it’s too much trouble to attend, say, a political debate and bang your head against the wall in frustration, a techie will break your skull with a keystroke at a distant (probably outsourced) computer company. How convenient.

By the way, if anyone actually understands the meaning of “remote control breaking,” please let me know. In the meantime, snack on some gripe jelly and enjoy your bad mood.

Anatomy Lessons

6 Replies

Thousands of words have been written about the media’s tendency to present unrealistic body images. These signs are unrealistic, too, but in their own glorious way:

Where?

Where?

This shop apparently caters to customers whose toenails center around their spines. If that’s your situation, you’d certainly want a pedicure. Just think how uncomfortable it would be to settle into a chair, lean back, and hit a toenail.

Staying on the subject of feet, I can’t resist reposting this sign (see “Massage Tips”  at http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1253):

Front feet not included.

Front feet not included.

 

The hyphen in “back-foot” creates one description; therefore, this store massages only your back foot. Go somewhere else if your front feet are sore.

Here’s another sign that assumes some strange anatomical features:

How many upper lips do you have?

How many upper lips do you have?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, “upper lips” and “under lips” may be a general reference to body parts, not a strict count of what’s on a client’s face. But why the singular “chin” then?  A customer is more likely to have more than one chin than more than one upper or under lip, even in this city well supplied with supermodels who wear size zero. And what’s a “side face”? Is each side $10, or do some people opt for an asymmetrical look?

I’m not even going to speculate about the meaning of “Men Ear Wax or Thread.” But if you want to do so, go for it!