Category Archives: Snotty Comments on NYC Signs

Mocking double meanings and pretentious language on street signs and ads

Speling Is a Lost Airt

Leave a reply

I don’t normally bother to point out spelling errors in New York City signs, but every once in a while I can’t help myself. Why would someone have a sign professionally printed without running it through spell-check? I admit that spell-check is far from perfect, but still. A glance would have been enough to save this sign from over-consonance:

It would be nice to think that the sign-maker chose “dinning” to emphasize noise-level issues. I’ve often drowned a scarf in sauce while leaning over the table to catch one or two syllables. The background music and the shouts of other diners (dinners?) can be deafening! Alas, I don’t think that was the intention. On the plus side, the hyphens in “off-the-beaten-path” are correct.

Another instance of over-consonance:

When I saw this sign I immediately thought of Nagini, Voldemort’s pet snake. Read it aloud and listen for the hiss in “occassions.” I assume the sign-maker speaks Parseltongue, the snake language of the Harry Potter series.

The consonants are fine in this one, but not the vowels. The sign does, however, accurately reflect the feeling New York’s construction inspires in those of us navigating the city’s sidewalks:

If you’re overwhelmed after exiting the walkway, perhaps you’ll consider dinning out, with a sheet cake to mark the occassion.

Et Tu, NYT?

6 Replies

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.

Where?

Leave a reply

I don’t allow my phone to broadcast where it is and therefore where I am, because I enjoy whatever shred of privacy I can wring from modern life. I do wish, though, that some signs gave better information about location. For example, imagine you’re driving and come upon this sign:

Bay?

A bay can be a coastal indentation that boats bob around in. It can also be a window or a tree, and sometimes the sound of a hound. Digging deep into the vocabulary of public transportation, you find that a bay is where a bus parks to pick up or drop off passengers. But suppose you’re driving a car on a Manhattan street. What are the odds that you’ll slow down to figure out where the “bay” is, or worse, that you’ll spend so much time thinking about the sign that you’ll overlook the red light in front of you? I stood near this sign for a while, watching cars turn left from any of three lanes, plus a bit of another, which was intended for vehicles traveling in the opposite direction. Redefine bay if you please, but please let it be common usage before it hits the streets.

Another location issue:

Curated how?

I’ve held onto this sign since last autumn, trying to decide what the thrift shop is doing. “Curated” implies careful selection. But “curated by location”? I can only imagine a vast sorting area with workers deciding whether a coat is “totally Chelsea” or “too Upper East Side.” If so, I’d like to see the selection criteria. Wait, actually I would not like to see the selection criteria. I gnash my teeth often enough these days.

Which brings me to this, the best statement about location I’ve come across:

Instant karma

I’ve seen several cryptic messages like this one, sprayed around my neighborhood. They take me back to the early days of Keith Haring’s career, when he pasted black paper over subway ads and then drew barking dogs or radiant children. Am I watching the next street artist develop? Maybe. Even if the artist never achieves Haring- or Banksy-level fame, it’s nice to know where karma comes back: in the shower.

Presented Without Comment

Leave a reply

Actually, presented with only a little comment are these signs and the questions they raised when I saw them. The first involves finance:

4 – 7 p.m.?

I can only hope that the bartender doesn’t get paid by the (happy) hour, which runs from 4 to 7 p.m. I’ve given up correcting signs announcing that you get one cocktail when you buy one. What they really mean is that you get a second cocktail for free if you pay for the first one, but I won’t bother pointing that out. Seriously. I won’t even mention it.

To enter this construction site you need a helicopter:

How do you “sign at 2nd floor first” without passing through the ground floor? I’m giving the sign-writer a pass on “everyone enter” and “be orientated.”

Last one comes from a restaurant for people with extra-strong teeth:

Lacking hyphens, the four adjectives run together and provide interesting food for thought, which is the only sort of food they’re offering, according to this sign. Is it a batch-market or market-fresh? I don’t know or care, but I would prefer not to eat plates, even if they’re made from local clay, scooped out and kiln-fired at the height of the pottery season.

Nouning

Leave a reply

Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, says that “verbing weirds language.” So does nouning, my term for changing another part of speech into a noun. I’m not necessarily against the practice, but I must admit that these signs made me pause. (Paused me?) First up is a sign from an outpost of a coffee empire that will remain nameless:

A handcrafted?

The chalk is a bit smudged, but the intent is clear. Buy “a handcrafted” after eleven and you get a cheaper (but not cheap) “lunch item.” I wonder whether employees discuss their favorite handcrafts while they’re on lunch-item break.

Moving on:

A good what?

Yes, I cropped the photo, but no, I didn’t cut any words. Nothing appeared with “daily” except clouds. I snapped this one a couple of years ago, and I still haven’t figured out what it means. Theories welcome.

Last one:

I don’t shop for new “wears” at the dry cleaners, but maybe I should. I’m going to a wedding in a couple of weeks, and even an imperfect wear would come in handy. If you have any cocktail wears you don’t need, let me know. In the meantime, have a good daily.

Year End Thoughts

Leave a reply

With only a few days left before 2018 hits the history books, I’m offering some holiday advice, culled from signs I see in the few NYC stores that haven’t been wiped out by e-tailers.

First, party hearty, but maybe not this hearty:

I took this photo in early December.

I won’t quibble about “Opening on January 2019.” If they are “close” because they’re sampling wine for most of a month, the mistaken preposition is understandable, if not inevitable.

Next, shop locally. I wasn’t kidding about the effect of online commerce on the city’s landscape, and from what I’ve read, the same is true in suburban and rural areas. I’m planning some purchases here:

You never know when you’re going to need an exclamation point!

I don’t wear contact lenses anymore, but I may stop by for new glasses and a couple of spare punctuation marks. A store with a sense of humor deserves to stay in business.

Last, a resolution for the year about to begin:

Grab that handle!

Judging by the headlines, 2019 will be bumpy. To make the world a better place, we all have to “PULL A LITTLE HARDER.” Actually, a lot harder. Happy New Year!

Twenty Something

4 Replies

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!

2 Replies

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?

3 Replies

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.

I Give Up

2 Replies

After decades of bellyaching about the sad state of NYC signs, I have officially given up  — on some issues, not on all. Grammarian in the City will no longer object to the following:

As far as I’m concerned, BOGO all you want. I once thought that the concept of “buy one get one” was an unnecessary statement of the standard deal between buyer and seller. But now I see that most BOGO-users are too busy surfing social media to add an “F,” for “free.” Or maybe they think that BOGOF sounds like a mediocre brand of caviar. I commend this sign-writer for specifying the terms of the deal, spelling out “buy one get one” for “50% Off,” though strictly speaking the sign should read “BOGAOF50%O” (buy one get another one for 50% off). I concede that such a sign resembles the kind of password people concoct and promptly forget. I will, however, raise an objection to “tight.” I  prefer to cover both legs with “tights,” not just one with a “FREE tight.” And $75 is a little steep, don’t you think?

I’ve also thrown in the towel when it come to hyphens:

My first glimpse of this truck made we wonder whether Bunsen burners are prone to out-of-control blazes. If so, I thought, there is certainly a need for “scientific-fire prevention.” But perhaps this company pursues customers who prefer that the laws of physics take priority in battling flames? That meaning would call for “scientific fire-prevention.” Whatever. I’m done with fulminating about hyphenating.

Nor will I say one word about the silliness of this sort of sign:

Okay, just a couple of words: Is there anyone who believes that amateurs rent stores, buy equipment, and have signs painted so that they can repair “hand-bags,” zippers,” and “luggage”?  Judging from the trend to specify “professional” dry-cleaning, barbering, and other services, I guess the answer is yes. No matter. I don’t care. I can even live with this sign’s reference to moribund footwear (“dying” not “dyeing”).

Inaccurate acronyms, missing hyphens, and dead shoes:  This “professional” grammarian has given up on them all.