Signs of the Times
September 14, 2009 by Lorna Doone Brewer
Filed under Fun Stuff
Since starting this blog, I have finally found a way to vent my ongoing frustrations of misspelled and mispunctuated signs. It seems like they’re everywhere. In fact, did you know that an apostrophe that is incorrectly used to pluralize a word actually has a name? It’s often referred to as a “grocer’s apostrophe” because they’re so common on hand-made signs at markets.
It turns out that I’m not the only one who is keeping tabs on these things. Here is a huge section of a website dedicated to just such grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.
The best, though, is the guys documented by ABC News as they traveled cross-country and not only found and photographed signs, but also corrected them! The one above is captioned “a very relaxed apostrophe.”
Even though I generally dislike misspelled signs, sometimes they do encourage a little self-satisfied grin on my part. Like this one from Odee.com:
If you happen upon some fun misspelled or mispunctuated signs, send me a picture at lornadoone at berrybrewer dot com, and maybe they’ll be featured here!
I’ll never forget when I was a kid and saw a sign for “Pop Farts” at the grocery store. Ah, good ol’ grocer’s signs!
I will have to take a picture of the next sign I see! After Christmas, this was the sign at the local dollar store announcing the sale on wrapping paper in my neighborhood (it was inside the store, so only customers saw it):
“Raping paper 50 percent off!”
Not a good word to use for a sale, huh?