Sign Wrecks

(Backdated from Friday evening.)

I spent a healthy part of today on the train home from Williamsburg and then cleaning, so not much to talk about on that front, but yesterday I promised you some awful signs, and I intend to deliver.

For a couple of years now I've been a fan of Cake Wrecks, a blog devoted to searching out and gently ridiculing fouled-up professionally decorated cakes.  The idea of collecting odd permutations of the everyday appeals to me, but I've never come across a cake wreck (the few professional cakes in my life have been blessedly flawless), so I can't contribute to that particular theme.  However, my sojourn at the Williamsburg Pottery showed me the kind of wrecks I can collect - wrecked language!  There's quite an abundance of that, as we'll soon see, and as a literate person, I feel obligated to point out mistakes, even if it's out of my power to correct them (somewhere, Lynne Truss is smiling).  I wouldn't call any of these egregious, but these sorts of things entertain me, so without further ado, on to Sign Wrecks!

1.  The perfectly understandable

"Rennovation"

What, pray, is that?  It's "renovation," of course, and can you blame whoever was making this sign?  It sounds like it ought to have two n's, but it doesn't.  And if you were just sounding it out because you'd forgotten how it's supposed to be spelled, wouldn't you put in the extra n?   And since it's just a temporary sign in a remote corner of the linens building, I suppose it's not really that important. 





2.  The unpronounceable

"Straigt"

It's obvious what happened here - some one forgot the silent "h" in "straight."  But we can't give whoever wrote up this sign the passes we gave #1 (temporary sign and obscure location) - this is a permanent sign on the central aisle of the main building, and furthermore, sounding out "straight" does not get you "straigt."  It gets "strait" which, conveniently, is a extant word that has nothing to do with "straight."

But supposing that "straigt" were a word, what would it be?  First off, how would you pronounce it?  "Streygt" is the best I can come up, and as far as a definition, I'm stuck with a combination of stripping and death by hanging.  Erotic asphyxiation?  Perhaps we shouldn't go there.

3.  The Nitpicky

Take a moment to look at this one.  If you just casually glance, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with it - no misspellings, egregious or otherwise, and the phrase makes sense.  But if you're picky like I am, this (it's an apron, by the way) is bothersome for two reasons:

a) Look carefully at this and you'll notice a sentence fragment there at the bottom.  "Don't You Understand" can't stand on its own as a sentence, but it's being forced to by those exclamation points after "yet."  Never mind that using more than one exclamation point at a time is obnoxious - those big, bad upside-down i's have orphaned that poor little clause!  "Don't You Understand" is all by itself at the bottom of the apron, trying and failing to stand on its own two feet!!  This is a travesty!!! Someone needs to do something!!!!  Like take away my ability to type exclamation points!!!!!

b) Ahem.  Sorry about that - on to problem #2, which is a bit picky.  But here it is: I always thought that "It's Not Ready Yet" was the phrase we use, so shouldn't all four of those words be the same color?  (Also that "of" shouldn't be capitalized.)  In other words, a corrected version - re-aligned, punctuated, and parsed - of this apron should read:

What Part of

IT'S NOT

READY YET

Don't You Understand?

There - isn't that better?  Good thing I didn't have a red marker with me. 

4.  The just plain weird

"LiNEN N PLUS"

This is the outside of the linens building (which, interestingly, is where three of these four sign wrecks came from), and apparently, it's called "LiNEN N PLUS."  Er, wut?

 

I think I know what happened here.  They decided to open a building where they could sell linens, kitchen things (aprons, placemats), bath rugs, and so on, and they were trying to come up with a name: 

"Well, gentlemen, we've got some linens, and we've got some other things, so why not call it "Linens and Things"?"

"Actually, sir, we can't do that - that name is already taken."

"It is?  Well $#!+.  What about shortening the "and" to "Linens 'N' Things"?"

"Probable lawsuit, sir."

"Well $#!+.  "Linens 'N'" something...well, we're adding a new building, so how about "plus"?  "Linens 'N' Plus" - it sounds good to me."

The decision-makers confer and agree that it sounds good to them too.

"All right, sir, let's royally screw up the capitalization to be edgy and capture the youth demographic, drop the apostrophes because they cost extra, and make the N a different color to be arty - I think we've got a winner!"

And thus was born LiNEN N PLUS.  May the grammar god help us all.

-     -      -     -     -     -     -

So you see, there's quite a bit of fun to be had looking for grammatical mistakes in the world all around you.  Alas, it's the same sort of fun that an elementary school friend of mine derived from raking his nails across the blackboard and watching everyone else cringe as he did so - even thinking back on it, I involuntarily wince.  And looking at the these signs again I not only wince, but I wish for a large, red marker...