A Pedant's Delight

Sundae • Dec 5, 2007 2:48 pm
This thread is dedicated to photos of poor grammar, spelling and apostrophes in signs, menus, public notices and anything that catches your eye day to day.

Ideally, I would prefer it to be photos by Dwellars rather than something found on the internet. Especially Engrish - funny as the signs are, they are the result of poor translation rather than the inability of a native speaker to write correctly. Hey, check the title of the thread, I know I'm pedantic!

So I'll kick off with this treat from the William IV pub on Trafalgar Road.
Cloud • Dec 5, 2007 3:05 pm
Ugh. Why do people insist on putting apostrophes for plurals? I see this constantly! It's really not that hard, is it?
Razzmatazz13 • Dec 5, 2007 3:11 pm
MAN, I took a flyer we were giving out at work that spelled NEARLY EVERY WORD ON IT wrong in some way back in july...and I was going to post it on the cellar but never got around to it....and JUST tossed it away last week. *forehead slap*
SteveDallas • Dec 5, 2007 3:22 pm
Why not partie's? detail's?
regular.joe • Dec 5, 2007 3:24 pm
this one just caught my eye.
classicman • Dec 5, 2007 3:51 pm
What's wrong with that - one nut isn't enough for ya?
Elspode • Dec 5, 2007 7:02 pm
Why didn't they put an apostrophe on "parties"?
LJ • Dec 6, 2007 1:16 am
it would have been party's not partie's. and steve beat you to that one anyway. cmon..you're slipping.
TheMercenary • Dec 8, 2007 3:02 pm
Knock yourself out:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/
Sundae • Dec 9, 2007 4:15 pm
I have included the surround so you can see how important presentation is to this establishment. The detail in the cornicing! The moulding! The spelling! Ah...
jinx • Dec 9, 2007 8:02 pm
For the longest time our local chinese and sushi restaurant had a handwritten sign taped to the door reading "We are close on Monday!" but they took it down before I got a pic....
Cloud • Dec 9, 2007 8:56 pm
a moveable feast!
HungLikeJesus • Jan 30, 2009 6:48 pm
Thi's i's just wrong. (I wonder if the title was intentional.)

LONDON – On the streets of Birmingham, the queen's English is now the queens English.

England's second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they're confusing and old-fashioned.

But some purists are downright possessive about the punctuation mark.

It seems that Birmingham officials have been taking a hammer to grammar for years, quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs since the 1950s.

Through the decades, residents have frequently launched spirited campaigns to restore the missing punctuation to signs denoting such places as "St. Pauls Square" or "Acocks Green."

This week, the council made it official, saying it was banning the punctuation mark from signs in a bid to end the dispute once and for all. Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city's transport scrutiny committee, said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether "Kings Heath," a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe.

"I had to make a final decision on this," he said Friday. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."

Mullaney hopes to stop public campaigns to restore the apostrophe that would tell passers-by that "Kings Heath" was once owned by the monarchy. "Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," he said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it."

But grammarians say apostrophes enrich the English language. "They are such sweet-looking things that play a crucial role in the English language," said Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, which campaigns for the use of simple English. "It's always worth taking the effort to understand them, instead of ignoring them."

...

To sticklers, a missing or misplaced apostrophe can be a major offense. British grammarians have railed for decades against storekeepers' signs advertising the sale of "apple's and pear's," or pubs offering "chip's and pea's."

...
Cloud • Jan 30, 2009 7:56 pm
I'm not that upset over the omission of apostrophes in street signs; but I do get upset when I see proper plurals and possessives mangled. It's not really that hard!

I probably said this before, but we have a local daycare called, "Grammies Daycare." Every time I pass it, I think, "I wouldn't send my kids there--they don't even know how to spell!"
Shawnee123 • Jan 30, 2009 7:59 pm
heehee...I refuse to patronize any establishment that substitutes the letter C with the letter K.


Just won't do it. :)
xoxoxoBruce • Feb 1, 2009 11:27 pm
Cloud;528730 wrote:
I probably said this before, but we have a local daycare called, "Grammies Daycare." Every time I pass it, I think, "I wouldn't send my kids there--they don't even know how to spell!"


Perhaps it's not Grammie's Daycare, but a Daycare named Grammies. ;)
footfootfoot • Feb 1, 2009 11:50 pm
Shawnee123;528732 wrote:
heehee...I refuse to patronize any establishment that substitutes the letter C with the letter K.


Just won't do it. :)


What, do you mean spell "Bollar" with a K?