Category Archives: Snarky Remarks on Grammar

Picky observations on grammar and writing style

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!

Bread Dogs and Other Animals

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Today’s post is a menagerie of (mostly) imaginary animals, such as the one in this sign, sent by my friend Sean:

What’s your favorite large bread dog? I prefer a whole wheat pug, though they seldom weigh 25 lbs and over. (A pumpernickel Great Dane is a safer bet.) I’d take either of those to a picnic in this dog park, along with some peanut butter and strawberry jam.

A large bread dog is as imaginary as the animal on this sign, which was painted on a van I assume was headed off to Power Wash itself:

Question: Is an Air Duck a different species, or is it any sort of duck, say a Mallard or a Muscovy, that wandered into a air duct? Random fact before I move on: Wikipedia informs me that a psychologist spent a year determining that ducks attract more jokes than any other animal. Random-fact-related question: Who funds studies like this?

I’m divided on the merits of the product advertised on this sign, another contribution from Sean:

The price is right, but intimidation crab meat is a little aggressive, don’t you think? Maybe I’ll serve it to my favorite frenemy. No matter what, I won’t serve this:

Missing from this sign, I really really hope, are two words after fine foods: “for pets.”

That’s it for today. I’m off to cuddle, not eat, the family dog.

Pondering Punctuation

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Can we agree to give up on apostrophes? All together now: pry the key off the computer, excise the concept from your brain, and resolve not to write anything with a curved mark hanging next to a letter. Can you feel the relief? Never again will you have to critique a sign like this one:

This is not my dentist, but if I were in search of a new one, I would not rule out this fellow because the plurals are (gasp) written with apostrophes. Inserting punctuation is not the same as filling a tooth. Besides, apostrophe-less words are perfectly clear, most of the time. Take a look at this helpful sign from a clothing store:

On reflection, not very helpful. The sign is on the ground floor, surrounded by racks and tables displaying tee shirts and shorts for nonhuman life-forms (I can only assume, since the sign indicates that women’s, men’s, kids, and a single, solitary baby are accommodated downstairs). Back to my apostrophe point: If women’s were womens and men’s were mens, would shoppers be any more confused? I do admit that the lack of consistency is problematic. Anti-apostrophists like me could delete two bits of punctuation, and pro-apostrophists could add them. Both groups could pluralize the youngest age group.

This sign is also confusing, not just because of its punctuation:

I can ignore the PUSH / DO NOT PUSH issue, because (a) there’s a pandemic and (b) removing a decal from glass is not fun. What I can’t ignore is the !!! in the middle of a sentence. An exclamation mark is an end point. You get there and you’re done, unless you’re Panic! At The Disco, a band with an internal exclamation point that, perhaps not coincidentally, broke up a few years ago. Also, no one needs three exclamation points, especially now. We’ve had enough excitement for this millennium, thank you very much. Revised, much improved versions: Please DO NOT PUSH THE DOOR! or Please, do not push the door.

Perhaps the previous sign could send two of its exclamation points to the one below, sent by my friend Sean:

I would feel much more comfortable with an exclamation point after hunting. Even two. Much safer for everyone. Speaking of safe: please stay that way. Covid is still out there!

Claims

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My voicemail is rife with claims that my warranty (for a product I don’t own) is expiring. I frequently get “courtesy calls” about extending an about-to-lapse auto insurance policy. (I haven’t had a car since 1975.) Faceless, but unfortunately not voiceless, people claim to want to help me with social security, taxes, and credit card charges. The message I get is clear and most likely unintentional: Be wary of any and all claims. Like this one:

I accept the statement on the left, but not the one on the right. Do the shop’s tailors really wear gloves? If they do, how good is the tailoring? How often do tailors sew their gloves to the garment they’re altering?

I’m even more skeptical of this claim:

Sounds good, but that asterisked “No cost with most insurance” seems to contradict the massive FREE.

These three signs may be accurate, I guess. I have to guess because I don’t have a clue what whole refers to: the living room? house? football field? fingernail?

This last sign, sent by my friend Sean, makes a completely believable claim:

Good to know you can trust some claims. Just not all.

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!

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.

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.

For the Birds

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Although a number of pet birds have flown around my living room through the years, I tend to divide avian wildlife in New York City into two categories, as this sign does:

Why single out pigeons? Here’s my theory: if you have one or two pigeons, they’re beautiful — a feathered palette of grays and whites with touches of black. But that’s never what you actually have. You have a flock, a megaflock, many megaflocks! You have a pigeony exponential growth-curve akin to the one Covid-19 has, unfortunately, made us all too familiar with.

Pigeons also make an appearance in this sign, which a reader spotted in a park:

The reader remarked that she “would have thought NYC already had plenty of these without anyone having to breed more.” I join her in rejecting this imperative sentence.

Still another pigeon, because, as I said, you really can’t have just one:

You can read this sign two ways. (1) You’re not required to feed a pigeon and clean-up, but doing so would be nice. (2) You’re not supposed to feed the pigeon, but you’re going to do it anyway, so could you please remove the inevitable end product? It’s the law. Which surprises me. I know there are all sorts of laws about snow removal — how much time may elapse after the last flake falls before you must shovel a path for pedestrians, for example. Is there also a time limit on poop? Do you have to sit around staring at the pigeon you’ve just (illegally) fed, so you can scoop the end product? Asking for a friend.

That’s it for pigeons, you’ll be glad to know. But not for birds. Below is one of the first signs I spotted when I started this blog:

Then, as now, I smiled to think of how you would sit . . . birds. Bend their little legs? Offer a chair? I’ll leave you with that image, hoping it cheers you, and any pigeons you’ve befriended.

The Importance of Rpoofreading

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That little extra minute spent rereading an email, post, text, or sign . . . it’s hard to quantify its value, but I’ll try anyway. Take this sign, sent by my friend Sean. There’s only one misplaced letter, but what a difference that stray N makes! I’d definitely pay more than $4.99 to know that the devil hasn’t hunkered down under my tree, eating cookies intended for the big guy in the red suit. (Also, Santa deserves homemade baked goods. Just saying.)

Then there’s this line from an email I received, sent by a school I attended:

If the alumni office wants to assign a body part to my class, I’d prefer a new knee or maybe a shoulder. I’m guessing that class elbow is the auto-incorrect of “below.” The email this sentence appeared in didn’t ask for donations, but that’s always, and understandably, the subtext when your alma mater reaches out. Although I can’t condone proofreading errors, I’m actually tempted to give more because this made me chuckle, which is no small feat in 2020.

This mistake, on the other hand, is worth thousands of dollars — the salary of the person who inserted it in a stock paragraph preceding a film review. (I cropped out the name of the film, because it’s an obscenity. Judging by the review, so was the film.) This is from the print version of The New York Times:

Someone was probably drinking something while writing this, and it wasn’t water. I do hope the writer negotiated severance pay before passing out of the ranks of the employed.

Moral of the story: an ounce of prevention goes a long way, in proofreading and in life. Be safe!