Entries Tagged '"quotations"' ↓

I could make several individual posts out of the pictures I took at a single store this weekend.  But I won’t, because that feels like cheating.  So here we go.

The best part about this one was that it was a copy.  They’d copied it and posted it all over one end of the store, an exuberant festival of abused apostrophes and quotation marks.

I’m willing to give points for consistency.  If you want to argue that you’re going to just preface every single “s” with an apostrophe — I mean, you’d be wrong, but at least you’d be consistent.  Similarly if you argued that pluralization should occur with apostrophes: still wrong, but some points.  I’d even accept an (incorrect) argument that nouns that end in the singular with a vowel, like “sample,” require an apostrophe for pluralization, whereas those ending with consonants don’t.  But why on earth would you pluralize “sample” and “cap” with an apostrophe and NOT “box”?

John provides some background:

A local road that is  under construction has some poorly maintained train tracks at a steep angle to the roadway.  Many cyclists have been injured when their bicycle tires get caught in the tracks.  Instead of filling the tracks with rubber, allowing trains to use the tracks and cyclists to cross safely, the railroad put up this sign.

Urgh.  “Seriously.”

Look, we cut it daily, okay?  So it’s fresh cut.  But we don’t want you smart-alecks getting all fussy when you notice that the fruit is moldy.  I mean, it’s two weeks old, right?  So it’s not so much “fresh” by any real definition of the word.  It’s just fresh-cut.

I saw this one and I thought “At last, an appropriate use of quotation marks on a handmade grocery store sign!”

Yes, that’s right — “Yum yum” could well be what kids say while eating watermelon, and therefore does in fact belong in quotes.  Get this sign-maker a cookie!

But then, I saw this…

I suppose it’s possible that my friend the sign-writer was making a comment on the nature of watermelon as a treat.  Because let’s be honest, if it isn’t made of chocolate, it isn’t a treat, amIright?

It’s not that I don’t enjoy a fully-grown modern man invoking a curse against another fully-grown modern man.  I totally do.  It’s just that this letter from Cavaliers Majority Owner Dan Gilbert seems to also contain a little punctuation abuse.

Here’s a screen-cap, for posterity (edited only for layout).  Click to embiggen.

I was going to red-pen this, but it’s more fun like a puzzle.  How many things annoy YOU, Dear Reader?

Leah writes that this sign made her so distraught that she “was waving [her] arms about noticeably” and nearby store clerks had to ask her if she was okay.

I’ve “left” it “uncropped” because I like to imagine that that dude inside is totally staring at Leah.  “Awesome.”

We’ve been so swamped with apostrophe abuse recently that I’m thrilled to post Lisa’s beautiful quotation-mark violation.  “Thanks,” Lisa!

Galen says:

This is posted above the fish tank at my school. It replaced a sign that said essentially the same thing, it just didn’t have the interesting punctuation. I will say that this new sign manages to attract my attention every time I go by (but not in a good way).

So we have the obvious quotation-mark abuse, random capitalization, and one that’s annoying me a lot recently.  I see the “hyphen-preposition” construction a lot on the web, as in “log-on” or “sign-in.”  I understand that one would want to hyphenate if one were modifying a noun, such as “sign-in sheet” or “log-in process.”  But I’m far more likely to see “please log-in now,” which I hate.  And now we see that phenomenon expanding to fish tanks.  What’s next, people??  What’s next?

Reporter #1 wants us all to warm up our brains this fine Monday morning with a little puzzle.  (Click the pictures for clearer images.)

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What is the herd plural of “error”?

In other news, the lovely Lisa R. says:

Park Slope Brooklyn: I sigh in shame for you. This at the fish counter at Union Market, which is swanky enough to know better.