Tag Archives: grammar

Grammarian in Dublin, Part 2

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I don’t know whether everyone in Dublin has kissed the legendary Blarney Stone (“legendary” as in “imaginary or invented”), thereby picking up facility with language along with whatever microbes the previous kisser left behind. I do know that words seemed, to this tourist, more intriguing in Ireland than in many other spots I’ve visited, such as West 34th Street or Brooklyn Heights. Take this sign:

Alouders unite.

“Alouders” isn’t in the dictionary, but who cares? It’s easy to recognize “alouder” as “reciter.” Easy for everyone and everything except for autocorrect, that is, which keeps trying to change “alouder” to “alder.” I may never see “a poem as lovely as a tree,” to quote Joyce Kilmer, but I’d hate to trade the spoken word for a forest. 

Then there’s this sign, cemented into an outer wall of the Museum of Decorative Arts, which is located in a former military installation called the Collins Barracks:

I have two theories about this sign. It may mark the location of a last-ditch line of defense. I mean, what else are you supposed to use if you run out of bullets and your saber’s edge is dull? Or it may be an art project, a cryptic reference to what can break bones. (I couldn’t find a similar panel labeled “Words That Can Never Hurt Me.”) 

 Perhaps my favorite Dublin sign is this one:

Grammar School

The school building has undoubtedly been modified since its founding more than four centuries ago. But St. Patrick’s Grammar School is still there, and still in session! Across the street in the Marsh Library (established in the 16th century also), a grammar book used by some of St. Patrick’s original students is on display. 

That’s not blarney. That’s education.

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’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.

Tense Teaching

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Labor Day has passed, and school has begun. Like autumn leaves, rants from nonteachers about what’s wrong with our schools/teachers/kids pop up, exasperating pretty much everybody who’s ever actually entered a classroom and tried to educate some kids. It seems like a good time to examine a photo my friend Catherine, a fine teacher, sent me:

Catherine spotted this in a doctor’s office, where the medical staff either believed that their patients already knew everything or saw the task of educating them as hopeless. Or, more likely, the docs were too busy filling out insurance forms to tuck some pamphlets into the container.

But there’s another way to interpret this sign. It labels “education” as “patient.” In my opinion, that’s what true education is and what teachers must be. Patient people know that change takes time. And time is tense  (not the physical and emotional state, though “tense” is what anyone would feel after spending the day with twenty squirming, wish-it-were-still-summer, small beings). In grammar, tense creates a time frame.  

Teachers work in three tenses. They must take into account what their students already know (past tense) and what the kids are doing now (present tense), be it wadding gum into the spout of the water fountain or solving long division problems. Invisible but most important is the work teachers do in and for the future. Good teachers don’t simply impart information. They cultivate critical thinking, healthy life habits, and an appreciation of others’ perspectives. They don’t see immediate results. But those seeds grow, slowly. In the future, what teachers planted — they can only hope! — matures and ripens.

I have one more sign for all nonteachers espousing unfounded and unfunded ideas about education:

 

 

Politicians and pundits: Go ahead and disturb all the classes that aren’t “in session.” Then take a moment to thank teachers for creating our future.

Punc. Puzzles

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What governs whether a sign-maker has room for letters and punctuation? Font? The size of the sign? I’m going for chaos theory, based on these signs. The first is from the “Dept of Transportation”:

Somehow “ped” got a period, but “dept” didn’t. Both are abbreviations, “ped” being the shortened form for “pedestrian” and “dept” for “department.” In case you’re wondering (actually, despite the fact that you’re not wondering at all), I should mention that this NYC “dept” isn’t consistent when it comes to punctuation relating to walkers:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe the plural “peds” seems different to the dept? Grammatically, it’s not.

Not only “depts,” but also building owners get creative with punctuation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neither of the two sentences on this sign ends with a period. Also, “owners” should have an apostrophe, before the s or after it, depending upon how many people own the bikes. I gave up the apostrophe battle a long time ago, so I won’t dwell on that issue here. I do wonder (a) how the landlord can figure out who owns a bike and (b) exactly how the “expense” is collected. I’m betting this sign is an empty threat. (Also ineffective, given the number of bicycles that have nearly run me down on New York sidewalks. What’s the dept doing with the time saved by ignoring punctuation rules?) I also wonder about the criteria for capital letters in this sign. If standard rules for caps had been in effect, only “No” and “Removal” would qualify (first word of each sentence), as well as the “Ps” in the title, “Private Property.” If the caps were for emphasis, why is “expense” in lower case?

Another:

I understand that consistency is difficult to achieve in, say, a 200-page document. But if you’re working with only two sentences, you ought to be able to spare a period for each or omit the punctuation mark entirely.

Last but not least:

Okay, no period at the end of this sentence: I’m used to that. But I can’t find any reason for a comma before the conjunction “or.”  For that matter, I can’t find a reason for the text as written. Why not just say “DO NOT FEED BIRDS”? Theories welcome. Punc also.

Service with a . . .

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The rule used to be “service with a smile,” to which employees in stores and restaurants at least paid lip service. (Pun intended.) The rule has changed. Witness this sign, which my granddaughter spotted in a flower market:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I certainly sympathize with selfie-opponents, having been backed into, stepped on, and nearly blinded by people more interested in proving that they’d seen something than in actually seeing it. Think for a moment: the amazing place/thing/person that prompts people to take selfies is behind them. And unless, like countless generations of parents, you claim to have eyes in the back of your head, you aren’t seeing what you’re snapping. My sympathy for the flower seller doesn’t change the fact that her customers aren’t receiving any smiles here.

Or here, as noted by my friend Sharon:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grammatically speaking, an introductory verb form (“To Better Serve You,” which by the way displays a strange set of capital letters) modifies the subject. In this sentence, the implied subject is “you,” as you are the one who is supposed to “Refrain From Cell Phone Use.” I’m not quarreling with the sentiment expressed by this sign. Everything I said about selfie-shooters applies to many cellphone-chatters also. But in the sign, grammatically, no one is serving “You.”  The sign really means “shut up and let me do my job and we’ll both be happier or at least not hate each other quite as much.” I think. The logic befuddles, but at least the sign writer was polite.

As was this one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Kindly”? Traditionally, that adverb was for the customer: “Kindly refrain from throwing paper money at the waiter,” or something like that. Here the restaurant believes that it is acting “kindly” by reminding you that you’re a dinosaur if you think you can pay with currency. I do like “cashless,” which, judging from the prices, isn’t going to be a problem for the owners unless their bank account is hacked.

I’ll end with refreshing honesty:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I prefer wine, but I think I’ll go to this restaurant anyway. Who can resist “mediocre service”?

Help Wanted. Please!

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Still summer, still hot, still trying to figure out what some signs mean. A little help, please!

I understand “Credit and Non-Credit,” “Online,” “Leadership,” and STEM.  (In case you aren’t familiar with the acronym, that’s “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.”) But “Location-Based”? Last time I checked, everything was in a location. Are students getting credit for thinking about where they are? I imagine this advertisement, which is from a university with an excellent reputation, refers to study abroad or in locations that invite scientific or sociological research (e.g. Antarctica or a rainforest). If so, say so, I thought. Then I tried to reword the line and came up empty. Suggestions?

Here’s a physical/verbal oxymoron:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The posted bill (which the dictionary defines as “a written or printed notice”) outlaws itself. I  spent some time wondering how to get around this problem. You could say, “Post no other bills,” but that sounds clunky and invites reactions such as “What’s so special about your bill?”  A few weeks later I saw the same words stenciled on a wall. Does a stencil count as writing? Is a non-paper bill a bill? No idea. Thoughts welcome.

And there’s this beauty from the New York Times:

The verb “refund” is transitive; that is, it takes an object. To whom is the bank refunding “Mr. Kemm”? Does he come in a large version of those bill-shaped envelopes you get when you withdraw a lot of cash? Is he shrink-wrapped, like (I imagine) deliveries from the treasury? Speculation invited.

I spotted this problem on a menu sign in the cafeteria of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I couldn’t come up with a solution:

I was fine with the first two lines and the last, but the third one stumped me. “Bolognaise” (often written as “Bolonese”) is a meat sauce. But before I got to that word, I pictured “house-made beef” and immediately wondered where the Met was raising its cattle. In those mysteriously roped off galleries? Hidden in the basement and taken out at night to graze in Central Park? My first thought was to drop “beef” as unnecessary information. But I did a little more research and found that Bolognaise sauce may contain beef or pork, or, for all I know, ostrich or aardvark. So “beef” is actually essential information. I spent several hours trying to reword the sign to avoid the cattle-on-Fifth-Avenue issue. (Yes, I really should get a new hobby.) My best answer was a comma after “house-made.” I could also envision a hyphen (beef-bolognaise). Neither satisfied me as much as the pasta, which was quite good. Chefs, how would you word this sign?

Puzzles

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Although it’s still July, I can’t help feeling that we’ve hit the dog days of summer, which should show up in late August. Maybe it’s just me. Or climate change. Regardless, it seems like a good time to present some puzzles to take your mind off the heat. Here we go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, this sign does not include the word “free,” so it isn’t saying that if you buy one shoe, the store will throw in another one without an additional charge. I don’t need to point out that in the non-shoe world, buying one thing usually results in your getting one thing. An upsetting possibility is that shoe stores are beginning to follow the playbook established by airlines: Charge a basic rate that includes almost nothing, and then add fees. “Want the matching shoe? Upgrade to the pair rate!” If that’s the case, I think I’ll hop.

My friend Catherine spotted this sign:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over several glasses of wine, we decided that this place either offers head-to-toe service or caters to clients with hoof-and-mouth disease. Other theories welcome.

Then there’s this sign:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t realize that Bento Boxes were “Irish to the Core.” I may have one with a glass of Japanese-to-the-Core Guinness.

Last one:

The truck handle underlines the crucial word, which seems to promise 24-hour service if you need a stringed instrument (the “Viol”) removed. The puzzle: There’s a period after “Viol,” implying an abbreviation (most likely candidate: violation). But there’s also a red dot between “Viol.” and “Removal,” separating the two concepts. Why would a company offer “violation” (abbreviated or not) to its customers? You figure it out. I’m going out for some iced coffee. Or an Irish bento box.

 

Down with Apostrophes!

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Maybe it’s the spirit of rebellion inspired by the approach of Bastille Day, but I have to ask: Why do we need apostrophes?  Perfectly respectable languages — French and Spanish come to mind — manage without them. Does anybody really think that writing “Georges flag” instead of “George’s flag” will mislead a reader? Unfortunately, abolishing apostrophes is not an option I can exercise unilaterally. And while they remain part of the language, I do think they should be used correctly. Often, they aren’t:

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this sign “sheets” is a plural, not a possessive. Therefore, this apostrophe isn’t okay. (Neither were the sheets, which looked a bit faded.) Maybe I should have razored out the apostrophe from that sign and inserted it into this one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the blurry photo; a grate, a screen, and a window blocked me, perhaps an unsuccessful attempt to mask a punctuation problem. The space between the N and the S implies that the sign writer had an inkling that “men s” was a possessive requiring an apostrophe, not a plural to be written without one. Yet somehow the punctuation never made it onto the sign. Nor is it clear what “men s wanted current designers” means. But that’s not an apostrophe issue. “Men’s wanted current designers” is just as confusing.

Here’s a fine pair, from two different stores. Care to guess which is correct?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I vote for the second, reluctantly. In the first, “dine” isn’t a noun. The hot dog and fries could be a “kid’s dinner,” or “kids’ dinners,” if they don’t eat much. But something has to change (both grammatically and nutritionally). The case for the second sign is that “kids” functions as an adjective. Despite watching the “Yankees game” instead of “the Yankees’ game,” I prefer “kids’ classes.” Also a hyphen in “pizza-making.” Nobody ever said I wasn’t picky. Just willing to guillotine apostrophes out of the language.