How good are you at describing things? The people who wrote these labels, signs, and captions were — well, let’s just say they need more practice. First up is a celebrity marriage:
Harrison partially abandoned his wife? Poor Calista! Also, to prevent harm to whom? And how long does it take to vacuum an 800-acre home?
My friend Catherine sent me this one:
She doesn’t have an INDOOR CHICKEN. Her cats, on the other hand, might enjoy this product, whether it’s made from INDOOR or outdoor CHICKEN. And FORMULA? What does that mean in this context, other than expensive?
This sign makes me shiver:
Do you have a CITIZEN who needs DISPOSAL? I sincerely hope not, but if you do, this FACILITY is for you! (FYI: It’s posted at the entrance to the country dump.)
Many New York apartment buildings have doormen, who, presumably, are the intended customers for this business:
I’d always assumed they showered or bathed. I never imagined they put themselves through DRY CLEANING!
This is not a post about a basketball tournament. It’s about what my Italian friend calls “Marzo Pazzo” — Crazy March. Judging from the weather last week, the month is accurately labeled. I was in Washington DC on Wednesday: it was 85 degrees and humid. On Thursday it snowed. This month in NYC I’ve toggled between “spring at last!” and “where did I put my heavy coat?”
As crazy as the weather are these signs, all of which I spotted this month. First up is a notice on a new building in my neighborhood:
You know the LEASING prices are high because it’s a COLLECTION of RESIDENCES. In my experience, those terms mean “we’re overcharging.” What’s crazy is ELEVATED. The building is about 20 stories tall. Shouldn’t the owner assume that prospective renters assume that they won’t have to climb the stairs to their RESIDENCES?
Speaking of elevators, I saw this sign in one:
Whenever I’m at Fairway Market, I know that I’m atFairway Market. Does management think that people wander in, find the elevator, and then ask “Where am I?”
Here’s a sign I saw in the window of a shop selling gummies and other hemp-derived products:
I understand the HEALTHCARE part, but not ADJACENT EXPERIENCE. Readers, please send me your theories.
Last one:
This is the horrifyingly expensive price list for a parking garage on my block. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t pay these prices. I don’t own a car.) My reason for placing this sign in the crazy column is the third line, Exotic Add’l. I can decode Add’l — “additional.” But Exotic? No clue. Your thoughts?
I could end this post with a wish that you enjoy the rest of this crazy month. But given the times we live in, I’m ending this post with a wish for sanity — or at least something that’s sanity adjacent. We could all benefit from that!
No matter what else I’m reading, I always have at least one mystery novel on my nightstand. At the end of a long day of bad news — far too frequent, these days — I need to dip into an orderly world where justice prevails. Yes, I know some mysteries deviate from that pattern. I don’t read those. How do I know whether a mystery fits my criteria? I read the last page first. Real life is surprising enough! Plus, I nearly always forget the identity of the murderer by the time I get to the end of the second chapter.
When I’m out and about, I enjoy mysteries also. Sometimes they show up in an overheard comment: “He’ll do for a starter husband” (one twenty-something woman to another) and “Have you brought your business to a successful conclusion?” (dog walker to poodle). Before you ask, yes, these are real things New Yorkers said.
My favorite mysteries appear on signs. Here’s one:
No one can read this without wondering which ingredients the store won’t sell. Unethically sourced shea butter? Uranium? Magic beans? It’s a mystery.
Here’s another mysterious sign:
Let’s get practical: How does the site owner know what parents have said to their kids? Does telling childrenof the dangers of trespassing fulfill the parents’ obligation? (“I told you, now go and trespass if you want.”) Also, isn’t trespassing anywhere a dangerous activity? Or only onthis site?
Another mystery:
I’m ignoring the subject-verb agreement error (Shower Caps should Keep, not Keeps). What I really want to know is whether there are Shower Caps that make hair wet. Also, is there a shower cap that keeps something other than HAIR DRY? Maybe there are Shower Caps for toes? Or belly buttons? Elbows, perhaps?
The mysteries presented here don’t conclude with justice triumphant, but neither do they honor the guilty. They’re just mysteries that add a little fun to my life and, I hope, to yours also.
Who doesn’t love the holidays? Lots of people, actually. If you’re stressed out, I have some suggestions. First of all, ignore signs like this:
If it’s NEW it can’t be a TRADITION, not if you accept the dictionary definition (“a long established custom passed from generation to generation”). Besides, you’re probably too busy to add anything NEW to your to-do list.
If you’re absolutely determined to try something NEW, here’s a possibility:
DROP-OFF your CHILD and let peace and quiet descend. Brilliant! And if the kid comes back in less-than-perfect condition, you can always go here:
After you pick up your clean, neatly folded offspring, stash them in a drawer and head to the mall. But avoid this store:
Why would you buy something at a store promising to lower the price after you’ve plunked over some cash? Be wary of this shop, too:
The 99 CENT part sounds good, but what about the PLUS? Thousand-dollar T-SHIRTS, million-dollar UNDERWEAR . . . the sky’s the limit.
That’s all the advice I have today, except for this: Find a way to enjoy whatever holidays you celebrate, and find a way to help someone who needs it. I wish you all the joy of this holiday season!
The national mood, and, I must admit, my own mood, is so down that an elevator to the sub-basement wouldn’t reach it. What to do in response? Well, you can have a serving of this:
(Photo courtesy of my friend Catherine, who prefers grape jelly and proper spelling)
Judging from the muttering and sometimes shouting of Gripe(s) I hear, this is a popular option. However justified your Gripe, though, venting your feelings is a short-term fix at best.
An alternative:
(Photo courtesy of my friend Deborah)
In my experience, inflicting the SILENT TREATMENT on others seldom yields positive results. The target may experience the silence as agreement or worse, welcome it as a peaceful interlude.
What else can you try? Here’s a tempting option:
The problem with BREAKING, REMOTE or otherwise, is that at some point you have to put the pieces back together.
One more:
I posted this photo of a New York Times headline eight years ago, commenting on the repetitive nature of the expression Failing to Succeed. (What’s the alternative — Failing to Fail? Succeeding to Success?) But now I’m focusing on Giving Compromise a Try. Not on matters of principle, of course. But maybe finding common ground around the edges of less important disagreements can lead us, and our national mood, out of the sub-basement. Perhaps as high as the basement? Surely that’s not too much to ask?
$1.5 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it? That’s the settlement of a class-action suit filed against Anthropic, a company that downloaded pirated copies of books, including fifteen of mine, to train its artificial intelligence software. When I heard $1.5 billion I hyperventilated for a few minutes. Then I read the fine print. Attorneys get paid first, and publishers will have a share. My portion, converted into coins, is likely to fit inside a medium-sized piggy bank. Still, I’m pleased that a blow has been struck against dishonesty.
Many more suits have been filed against AI companies, but I doubt any will include their effect on the em dash, the longest of the three punctuation marks formed with a horizontal line. Written material containing an em dash is now assumed to be AI-generated. In a weird way, that assumption makes sense. AI was “trained” by professional writers’ work. We use em dashes. Hence, so does AI. But as a professional, em-dash-using writer, I’m caught in a loop: my work looks like my work and therefore resembles AI-generated work designed to mimic my work. Kafka, meet Chat GPT.
Now for the en dash, a slightly shorter line that signifies a strong connection. Sometimes the connection is geographical, describing, say, a train route between Boston and New York. Sometimes it’s personal, referring perhaps to the coordination between pitcher and catcher. Most often, the en dash functions chronologically:
That’s what it’s doing on the stone-paneled wall of a churchyard in my neighborhood. Each slab is incised with a name and a set of dates. A life span! The en dash expresses the strong — in fact, absolute — connection between birth and death. A couple of panels, belonging to the ultra-prepared, show only one date and the en dash, waiting to be completed by an unknown, though certain expiration date. If the em dash has come to signify inhumanity (for what else is artificial intelligence?), the en dash expresses the ultimate truth about humanity. Everyone born will die.
Before the en dash comes for you, I recommend you make the most of every moment — for yourself, and for a world that needs all the help it can get.
Speaking of the world, I have an update to share. Take a look at this photo, which I snapped outside the United Nations in 2015:
For a decade, drivers had to decide which sign to obey — STOP or NO STOPPING. But now all the signage has replaced. NO STOPPING is what drivers are supposed to do. Which means that if the traffic light next to the NO STOPPING sign is red, you should blow right through the intersection. Well, nobody’s perfect.
Proofreaders make comments to writers, who are supposed to amend their text accordingly. That’s a good system — when it’s actually put into practice. Not so in these signs.
First is a sign my student Allison sent me. There’s a ton of words, but if you persevere, the last line makes the time you spent reading more than worth the effort:
If it’s still too long let me know must have been meant for the person in charge of placing labels on food, who, based on this sign, either had way too much to do or cared way too little about the finished product.
Next is a sign — one of a dozen or so — posted on West 72nd and Broadway when Pope Francis visited New York City in 2015:
Once again, it’s worth plowing through these nearly unintelligible instructions for trash pickup to arrive at the last line: he said the 4 — 12 shift. If he was Pope Francis, I commend him (posthumously) for his attention to detail.
I found this one while searching for a place to stay during a recent trip. I won’t reveal the name of the perpetrator, but I will say that it’s a major hotel chain:
The fun part of this caption appears in the center of the second line. The text indeed needs a comma, and the hotel needs to pay more attention to its advertising.
Whatever form your labors take, I wish you a Happy change to lower case Labor Day weekend.
A former student of mine recently put out a call for catchphrases unique to a family. If you’re in the family, you know the meaning. If you’re not in the family, you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. These signs fall into the “if you know, you know” category. They make perfect sense to somebody, somewhere, but they puzzle to the rest of us. Here’s one:
What does RADIANT TUBING do? And what is it radiating — joy, sunlight, cosmic rays? Why must we BEWARE? And does BEWARE mean “don’t come within three miles of this sidewalk” or “take your piledriver somewhere else”? Theories, or better yet, actual information, welcome.
Another enigmatic ad:
I live in the sort of neighborhood where doing one’s own chores is not a given. Even so, I’m surprised that someone would hire someone else for BREAKING a REMOTE CONTROL device. In my experience, all you have to do is throw the thing at a wall. The wall generally cracks, though. Maybe that’s a reason to hire a pro?
It’s well known that some of us are not technologically literate enough to figure out an app. So it would not shock me to see a service offering help with, say, downloading, installing, and using an app. But the service offered by this sign goes a step too far:
I don’t need someone to PICK-APP for me. I can select an app all by myself!
Last one:
No, this doesn’t refer to a haircare product. It concerns parchment paper. Does anyone actually measure and cut the paper and then reinsert it for Decurling? This definitely falls into the life’s-too-short category for me. I use my hands.
Wishing you well in these dog days of summer! If your family has a catchphrase, feel free to share it.
Every once in a while I see a sign that’s missing something: a letter, a word, a punctuation mark, or, all too often, clarity. Consider this notice, which was chalked on an old-fashioned sandwich board near the entrance to a rather fancy (i.e. expensive) food store near me:
I’ve cropped the photo, but nothing I removed answers this question: Place your party platters & cake where? The sign appeared at the beginning of a holiday season, so presumably the store was hoping for advance notice instead of a same-day request to rescue a host who invited 235 people to a celebration despite having only two olives and a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. Which I’m pretty sure in my neighborhood is not all that rare. My sympathy is with the sign-writer, who neglected to squeeze the word “order” into the message.
This notice, which my friend Andie sent me, is missing an important definition:
I’m guessing the store doesn’t want to Refund any money to its customers. But what does Redone mean? (And why are Refund and Redone capitalized?) If I buy a salad and report that it’s a bit vinegary, for example, will the store rinse off the leaves and apply new dressing?
I’ve held onto this sign for a while, trying to decide whether it’s an insult to neighbors (RESIDENT TRASH) or an attempt to fend off TRASH that turned tourist and went sightseeing inside this bin:
Theories welcome.
I doubt I’ll ever patronize this establishment:
Some crucial information is missing from this sign: How deep are the cuts? Are we talking scalp-scrapes or decapitation? Also, do the police know?
My late husband spotted this sign some years ago, in a major-appliance store that went out of business soon after he snapped the photo:
What’s missing from this label, of course, is a list of the food that comes with — w/ — this Refrigerator. Is it stuffed with macadamia nuts and caviar or leftovers from the manager’s lunch?
All joking aside, we’re all missing something these days. Whatever you’re missing, I hope you find it!
What’s the opposite of “mass marketing” — the attempt to reach as many customers as possible and (unofficially) to bloat my email spam folder? I’m calling it “tiny marketing” — the attempt to reach a specific sort of consumer. Very specific.
Take this store, for example:
I was not surprised to see a going-out-of-business sign show up in the window of this shop. After all, they were marketing to one KID (indicated by the apostrophe’s position before the S) instead of to all AMERICAN KIDS, for which they’d need to place the apostrophe after the S.
The audience for this sign is also rather small:
Opera singers who are into DUMPING GARBAGE into an ARIA — how many can there be?
I truly don’t know how many vehicles this sign addresses:
Question: When you’re riding on ALT BUSES, what sort of alt rock is piped in? May I suggest Nirvana and the Foo Fighters? Maybe a little U2?
This product could have wide appeal, but somehow I doubt it:
I’m not sure I’d ever want my portrait painted, but if I did, I wouldn’t want Abraham Lincoln looming over me. I’d rather be in a canvas by myself.
One last photo, with no-question-about-it mass appeal:
Unless you want Shower Caps that ensure wet hair, this product’s for you. I imagine that’s all of us. I know that’s all for this post. Happy first day of summer!
