The link works! Cool. It’s to the Other Board That Must Not Be Named.
I saw this on my way to work this morning. Not one but TWO typos on the side of a panel truck. I find it hard to believe that a legitimate professional graphics company would put that on a truck. It must have been their brother-in-law or something!
“Shower Conversation” is a great band name!
Please add to the thread with any real life sign typos you have seen. Pictures would be great!
@LSLGuy - does this link work? I’m hampered by posting on my work computer that doesn’t allow me to look at Instagram or Imgur. This is to my Instagram account.
I have a friend who works in a school district that, a number of years ago, had a lot of criminal activity in the administration that included the treasurer stealing over $300,000. Well, during that time, there was a box of paper in the junior high section designed for coordinate graphing.
The sign on the box read, “Graft Paper”. The teachers, who were aware of all the legal problems in their district got a big laugh out of it.
A home handyman I used to use was OK not great at his trade, and definitely no English scholar. Most work he did was fine, except for one minor oops or headscratcher left behind when the job was done.
The sign painted on his panel van said
Fred’s Handyman Service
Work at it’s finest
Somehow that fit him so well he really shouldn’t change it. Thats if anyone ever told him; I didn’t.
You might think that. But look at what I did in my post about misplaced apostrophes that you’re responding to (bolding added in my self-quote):
Now in my defense that was a typo, not a confusion that “thats” is a valid word. And I was typing on my phone. That’s my excuse(s) and I’m stickin’ to 'em.
Its/it’s is particularly error-prone for many people because the general rule is “Use an apostrophe when forming a possessive.” AND “Use an apostrophe when forming a contraction”. For this specific pair of words, one of those two rules is directly violated. But which one? Any why that one and not the other one? There is no obvious priority between the two rules which would clearly say “In the event of a conflict, choose rule A over rule B.”
So it becomes a matter of memorizing the two arbitrary free-floating facts that “its” is the exception to the possessive rule and “it’s” is the non-exception to the contraction rule.
There was a truck I used to see around my neighborhood belonging to a company that specialized in “REFRIDGERATION”. I tend to be leery of companies that can’t even spell their specialty.
There’s a Chinese restaurant we’ve gone to for decades. The owners are a very well educated couple who speak fluent, accent-free English, but are originally from China. They are a riot.
They employ young people who have come to the US from China and are in the process of learning English. They give the servers American sounding names, like Martin and Emily to help them fit in.
One time I gently broached the topic of the misspellings/poor grammar in their signage, both in and outside the establishment. They told me, “white people expect it and see it as a sign of authenticity”.
