Category Archives: Snarky Remarks on Grammar

Picky observations on grammar and writing style

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!

What I Meant Was . . .

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I think and also hope that what these signwriters think they said is different from what actually landed on the page. Or screen. Or metal sheet. Wherever! Take a look at this one, courtesy of my friend Don:

Someone killed 3 Pedestrians for my own Safety? Please let that not be true. Also, what will Repeat to cross other side? Homicide? And don’t get me started on the green man’s activity.

Another, which I spotted while obsessively checking apartment listings in my building to find out who’s moving:

I’m wondering which hairdresser the apartment owner went to for Coiffured Ceilings. I have to admit that my own ceilings have never been cut, dyed, or curled. However, they are coffered by support beams. Does that make me stylish enough?

Probably not. I do sometimes shop at a fancy grocery, where the food is better than the accuracy of the “best if bought by” date:

True, time is relative and certain portions of 2020 have seemed endless, but September 31st? Nope. Well, maybe if there’s a recount . . .

The Dangers of 2020

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We all know that 2020 presents a long list of dangerous situations, the pandemic being just one. But I haven’t read much about Food Danger: not what you eat, but the danger of being eaten. Take a look:

I’m not attending any event offering entree choices of beef, pork, or child. I wonder how many people took the last line seriously and listed “human flesh” as a dietary restriction.

When I couple the card above with the sign below, I fear cannibalism is becoming a trend:

Call me picky, but I don’t want a restaurant to serve me, as in serve me on a plate, or to serve anyone else, for that matter. Better to take care of each other! With that in mind, perhaps we should veto this plan:

I must admit that the above signs seem attuned to the mood of this awful year. Maybe the problem stems from too much disinfectant:

Please don’t satanize anything (or anyone, no matter how tempting). Do stay safe, and keep those around you as safe as possible, too.

Paging Autocorrect

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Before autocorrect, I’d sometimes proofread my work and find hte. “C’mon, computer,” I’d think in exasperation. “You know I meant the!” Autocorrect has brought its own problems, of course, but it certainly would improve these mangled expressions:

I can think of a lot of reasons to swing open cell doors, but criminalized onion relish isn’t one of them. Side point: Is Prime topside a real cut of beef?

Next is a sentence a friend found in a concert announcement:

We’re excited to open the series with a performance featuring renounced vocalist. . . .

I’ve omitted the name of the renounced vocalist, who is innocent, I’m sure. The copywriters, on the other hand — let’s just say that if we weren’t already in pandemic lockdown, I’d recommend they serve detention.

Whoever wrote this should do serious time for Crimes Against Language:

The spelling mistakes don’t bother me. If I can type hte, I can forgive becarse and unassemboed. Ditto for the odd capitalization and punctuation. What gets me is the last sentence. Is there really a correct way to cause a series of problems? Extending the point, is there an incorrect way? Just thinking about this is enough to make the screws loose.

Keep your screws tight, try not to renounce anyone, and don’t criminalize condiments. And stay fsae. I mean safe. Thanks, Autocorrect.

On the Defensive

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Lately I find myself thinking of 2020 as a real-life version of Ghostbusters 2, the one with a bubbly river of pink goo that makes everyone snarl and fight. Reinforcing that feeling are some signs that have a markedly defensive tone. Here’s one:

Pardon the bars. I took this photo during an early morning walk, so the store was closed and the gates were down. Nevertheless, the implied dialogue was easy to imagine: “Whadda ya mean, out of business? Yeah, the laundry has been shut for a while, but we still do dry clean.”

In the same vein, from the same walk, but in the window of a different shop:

More gates, more imaginary rebuttal: “I don’t care what the clerk said. I’m the owner and we do press duvet cover, sheets, pillow cases. So there!”

Last one:

The supermarket attached to this announcement is undergoing renovation, so it makes sense to proclaim, “We are still open.” But I don’t get the but. That word generally signals a change in direction or an exception to a rule. I can’t build a logic bridge from pardon our appearance to we are still open with but. Can you? If so, please let me know.

While you’re thinking, get defensive: wash your hands, mask up, and social-distance. And please, go on the offensive: fight the pink goo. This awful year needs all the kindness we can muster.