Very much in the same vein, a county building I used to do work in had signs informing visitors that the stairwells were armed at six pm.
Clearly the county believed not only in the right to arm bears, but also stairwells…
My favorite was a sign in the embassy in Geneva:
BADGE REQUIRED TO BE VISIBLE BEYOND THIS POINT.
I quickly hid my badge and slipped past the guard unseen.
This is the same guy at my place who, when asked if he used the format checker when preparing electronic message traffice (not e-mail), replied with:
I sometimes wonder if the people running the “Engrish” website really have to travel outside of English-speaking countries to get their stuff.
In a scrapyard near where I live is the sign “Non Ferrous Customer’s Entrance”.
So the Iron Lady and men of steel are not welcome there.
Sorry, mixed up the sign content with the Family Guy-based joke that resulted. The sign actually said “it’s for the missing chidings program”.
Common in Spanish hotels, restaurants and touristy stores: ENGLISH SPOKE and ENGLISH SPOKE HERE. Makes me wonder whether English is some famous guy or maybe their talking bulldog.
While working in Philly, we got an email from a VP who must have been drunk when he wrote. I mean, I hope he was drunk, because if that’s his normal mode of thinking it’s a wonder he got beyond kindergarten. It was laudatory, which is nice, but I really should have kept it. Most of it was all-caps; italics were boldly displayed all over the place, along with red and green that kind of made the piece look very Italian. The spelling was absolutely atrocious, starting with “Conratlations on a JOB WEL DONE!”
Tattoist in Manchester town centre has this sign
‘Body piercing while you wait’
An dey mus kill de zeeba?
DIE, ZEEBA! DIE! DIE! DIE!
(Why do I have the feeling I’m casting pearls before swine here?)
In the '80s I did a travel assignment at Tulane University Medical Center. One every stairwell door there was a permanent sign sayinng “Keep this door Close.”
Painted on a railroad tie in a parking lot near here is : “No Parkn? Townway Zone!” I think it means No parking, Tow Away Zone. I could be wrong.
Another sign I’ve seen is “no parking with out permission” That gap the the third word just looks weird.
In Sydney:
LAUNDRY: DROP YOUR PANTS HERE (probably intentional)
CHINESE BAKERY SELLING GINGERBREAD SANTAS: Funny Little Old Men for Christmas
GRAFFITI: Ride more bicycles (that one tickles me)
MEDICAL CENTRE (WITH NO ROADRAGE IN ITS CARPARK): Patient Parking Only
But that’s intentional! 
Compare the material here to the gems at engrish.com
No contest.
There’s nothing I hate more than an unnecessary apostrophe. It’s so pervasive that I think nothing can be done to stop the masses from committing this crime against spelling.
However, yesterday I saw this on a shop awning:
Beauty Supplys
I sighed, shook my head and thought to myself, “Well, at least there’s no apostrophe”. I guess you’ve got to pick your battles.
I just saw an odd one this morning. On a packet of Italian biscuits was a call-out proclaiming, “Registered lid guarantees quality!” Well great. Now I have to be worried about inferior products with unregistered lids wandering my streets.
(To be fair, I think they’re using the word “register” the same way offset printers do, wherein something is “in register” if all of its colours line up properly against the colour register swatches in the bleed area. At least they didn’t use the term printers use to describe something that lines up precisely: “Dead Register.”)
Sew dew eye.
LOL. go to
http://engrish.com/category_index.php?category=Candy
and see the Painapple, and Dew Dew candies. Then if you
look around you’ll see a lot more.
The Japanese seem to enjoy using English as a design element
on their products. It run from humorous non sequitors all the way to
foul language.
It can be uproariously funny.
And by the way, some of the smartest people here at SDMB cannot
seem to spell “weird” correctly. They type "wierd’ consistently which
I find weird because otherwise their spelling is perfect.
As I tell people who have trouble with this spelling: "Remember, the first word in weird is we."
Taped to outside of studio door:
ATTENTENT’N!!
Caution, Fliming!
I picture the person weilding the magic marker getting confused and annoyed at running out of space on the top line and having to abbreviate “ATTENTION” like that… ya know, it looked like there was plenty of room for the whole word when I started, wtf?
Close cousin to the industrious fliming that they were doing in there, the cafeteria had a separate catch-basket marked “SLIVERWARE” so that students would slide their trays forward and put their slivers in the basket, thus making dishwashing and, I dunno, sliver-pulling, perhaps, easier…
Then there’s the Freakin’ Nails sign close to where I live…
