Is this phenomenon strictly reserved for the South? I lived in Pennsylvania for the first 19 years of my life and never once did I see a misspelled sign. I’ve been in Louisiana for less than 3 years and I’ve seen DOZENS!
Driving down a major road here in Lafayette, I saw an auto repair store that would repair your “air coditioning” or so the handpainted sign said. The vast majority of the mistakes, however, are misplaced apostrophes. There’s a small antique store about 40 miles away called “Good Old Item’s.” I’m not sure exactly what the items are supposed to be possessing and I didn’t stop to ask. You’d think somebody would point these things out to store owners, who would in turn be humiliated at their idiocy and fix the sign immediately. Not so. These signs remain up for YEARS!
I have noticed that the number of misspelled signs in any given area is directly proportional to the number of Jesus fishes on cars and Confederate flags in pickup truck windows. Coincidence?
There’s nothing isolated about the problem unfortunately. I live in the pretentiously overeducated Northeast, and the local Public Works folks misspelled the name of my street.
I pointed this out when I sent my last tax payment to fund the local schools, but it seems not to bother them, since the sign remains.
Dr. Watson
“It is one of the paradoxes of our time that modern society needs to fear only the educated man.” – Robert H. Jackson
I went to high school in the very well educated state of Minnesota. Around my sophomore year, the school decided to spend lots of money putting up new signs in the building directing students to classrooms, offices, etc. I’ll never forget one of the signs pointing to the “gym’s”. It stood there for 3 whole years, and as far as I know, it hasn’t been changed yet. We all took it as a beautiful symbol of the inanities of high school.
A little off topic but what the hay, we had a grafitti in town that was supposed to suggest that we were being invaded by a bike gang. Unfortunately they spelled it “Satins Choice”. I have this mental picture of the bike gang riding into town on their hogs with pink feather boas around their necks.
Keith
Near where I used to live, there was a town called Spartanburg, but I saw a sign for it spelled as Spartnaburg.
"A man can’t turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved. What did Shakespeare say? “Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave man… only 500”?
Sorry, cheap shot, but it’s late, and it was easy, and . . . (shutting up now).
Dr. Watson
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” – Thomas Jefferson
In the DC area, there are a lot of businesses run by people to whom English is a second language. I’ve seen quite a few misspelled/bad grammar signs.
[ul][li]Resterrooms[/li][li]This change mashine is for game room user’s Please only. Use for game’s only.[/ul][/li]
In my hometown in Colorado, a new sign for Colorado Ave. was misspelled “Colorodo Ave.”
Have you never driven on I-95 and seen signs for Penns (sic) Landing? I dunno, it seems to me it’s where Penn landed; hence, it’s “his” and deserves a possessive apostrophe, a la Pike’s Peak or anything else. I really shouldn’t worry about stuff like this.