The Punctuator!

Registeration?

2011-11-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

I expected better from an engineer.

Eggcorn

2011-11-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

There is a nooby busdriver at work. Not the brightest spark. Whenever he writes the word "right" (as in "right side tire", e.g.) on our vehicle inspection reports, he writes "ride".

Mummy's

2011-11-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

My cable company's on-demand offerings includes oddities from Something Weird Video. The actual shorts and few feature-length movies are not as racy as their descriptions because they are on free TV. Or...so I've heard! I would never watch two sexy mummy's dance about!

For Worse

2011-11-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

click to embiggen

This may seem too nit-picky, but I hate For Better or For Worse, all the more so now that they're just rerunning quarter-century old cartoons. Why do we need to spend the next 25 years or whatever re-reading the same story, which wasn't that great the first time? Occupy the Funny Pages, people!

Anyway, what bothers me about this are some of the "backwards" letters. I haven't played with these magnetic letters for a long time, but as I recall the backs were hollow with a couple of little magnets set in the empty space. I don't think the magnets were strong enough to allow you to attach them to the metal object backwards. Even if these are some sort of amazing Canadian super-magnetic letters, there is enough detail in this image that the magnets should be visible.

Little asshole Michael (the future novelist, keep in mind) looks too old to be making mistakes with backward letters anyway. And you can't make S up-side-down either.

So I call "Bullshit!" on this already shitty comic.

Writeing Badly

2011-11-13T20:11:00.000-08:00

I thought of submitting this to lowercase L because of the "WAlKing", but the "-ing" sort of kills that - it's just a case of mixed case madness. No, the "liveing dead" is just too juicy to share with anyone else anyway.

Crank Did It Incorrectly

2011-11-13T19:58:00.000-08:00

This has always been one of my pet peeves in the whole business of bad signs - the so-called professionally made sign or banner with abuses of our language. What bothers me the most about these signs is that it always at least a two-person crime: the one who made the sign, and the one who approved of it (either knowingly or in ignorance) by paying for the erroneous work. It's not like the classic "greengrocer's apostrophe" type of mistake, wherein some business owner makes his own sign and is solely responsible for any mistakes therein. How wide-spread is this ignorance/laziness that these kinds of conspiracies occur so frequently?

Most puzzling of all is that the sign-maker got it right on a similar sign on another side of the property:

What the hell? I can see it slipping by once, but you would think that Crank Did It's (swear to god, that's the name of the sign maker - zoom in real close if you can if you don't believe me) customer would have noticed the difference between the two versions of the sign. But I guess not. Ignorance reigns supreme (that's ignorance with sour cream and tomatoes by the way).

Bowling for Apostrophes

2011-11-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

Let's also learn to use proper punctuation, shall we?

(Just and aside, buy how much you want to bet this patriotically pro-bowling license plate frame was NOT made in the United States?)

Bus Gead

2011-10-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I drive a bus. Some bus people are...well, let's just say they're not functioning at an average human potential, which has a lot to do with why they're riding the bus.

The local transit authority for which I work has a Facebook page. I like to visit it occasionally to see what riders have to say and the TA's replies. One series of comments really floored me because of it's extremely poor grasp of the language, and I thought I'd share it with you.

It started off innocently enough with a complaint by a passenger (with her English abuses underlined in red -- that is the theme of this blog, after all):

click for bigger

If this actually happened (and it may well have), that is indeed unfortunate, and doesn't look good for us. There are many reasons this could have happened, and the TA explains one in their response to Alejandra:

True dat! It can be hard to see someone who is taking shelter at a distance from the bus stop when it's raining. There are many other possible reasons Alejandra was missed, as she alleges. I say "alleges", because, as Dr. House likes to say, "People lie." Or if they're not lying, they're mistaken. Sometimes passengers aren't familiar with "were" every stop "are", and they can't understand why the bus passed them up. We have a pretty hard and fast rule that if you aren't within 50 feet of a designated bus stop (except for certain areas that are flag stop zones), we aren't obligated to stop for you. In addition to it being unsafe, the buses would never run on time (and they do, occasionally) if we had to stop for every bozo who tries to wave down a bus just anywhere.

Anyway, back to the business at hand - English mangling. Good job, by the way, TA, for your wise, well-written and error-free response to Alejandra.

Several days later, another Facebook "liker" of the TA decided to chime in on the somewhat stale conversation with a "new" comment of his own:

If you examine the first part of James's comment, you will see that he simply copied and pasted Alejandra's comment - mistakes and all - and changed a few words. I didn't bother trying to underline his mistakes, they pretty much speak for themselves, since James appears to be one of those people who constantly TYPES IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Annoying, isn't? I especially like how he didn't succeed in changing Alejanda's "im" ("I'm") to "THY" ("they"), but instead put "thy" after "im". I also find it interesting that his second use of "driver's" is exactly the same as the first one from Alejandra - lower case and unnecessary apostrophe firmly in place. Apparently he copied that one word out of her comment and pasted it into his all cap rant. Wouldn't that be more trouble than just hammering out the word for yourself with the cap lock on?

His claim that "ALL" drivers pass "EVERY ONE" up when it rains is pretty outrageous. We're not that bad. See, James, you can uses italics to emphasize words instead of capitalizing them.

I'm not sure why the TA bothered to try to dignify James's ridiculous rehashed comment with a response, but they did (the customer is always right, I guess):

To which James replied:

Seriously, WTF? What the heck is a "gead" supposed to be? Did he mean "geek", "head", "guide" (see later)? Does it rhyme with "head" or "bead"? Given his poor command of English (which will really become obvious in his next comment), anything is possible.

The TA gamely tried to reason with James, despite his dubious response to their last effort:

I guess every "gead" deserves his chance at a fair assessment of his vague beef, even to the point of actually viewing the security camera footage from the buses. Funny how this same surveillance system was unable to assist a driver when his backpack was stolen by a passenger, but they're willing to use it when an obvious idiot has some minor complaint about the bus service. Ah well, I'm getting off topic here.

Also, sorry about the red underline, TA, but I have to be fair. I just hope you never find out who I really am.

The TA's attempts to give credence to his complaints seemed to send James completely off the rails:

Umm...what? Do James's attempts to "till" others how to "ues" and "ried" the "buss" qualify his as a guide, or mayble a "gead" (see earlier)? Is "buss" one bus with an extra "s", or multiple buses? It seems to swing either way.

Is James trying to say that since he is somehow able to ride every bus everyday, that the TA can just pull any video from any bus and find evidence to support his claims? I'm really astounded by his statement that - to paraphrase - he pays too much to ride the bus and he likes it. Did he just leave out "don't" before the "like", or is he some kind of maniac who actually enjoys being over-charged for public transit? Maybe I'm totally misreading him - maybe "toomach" doesn't mean "too much", but is yet another unparsable Jamesism, like "gead". If he does indeed like paying "toomach", it would seem that "toomach" must mean something like "such a reasonable price", or maybe even "nothing at all". I may have an insight into James's modus operandi to support that second possibility (no James,I didn't italicize those words to emphasize them, but because they are a foreign phrase) - read on.

I didn't recognize James as a rider from his profile picture, but I showed this Facebook convo to the young lady who works in the customer service kiosk at the downtown Transit Center. She recognized him and said that he is one of College Town's many pedicab drivers. When she said that, I thought I knew who she was talking about. I've occasionally had this one passenger who kind of looks like the picture. He is a pedicab driver, and he may be partially developmentally disabled. He certainly isn't the brightest bulb. He also rides using a Smart Card, one of the magnetic or micro-chip embedded cards which are issued by a local agency so that all a developmentally disabled person has to do is pass it over a reader on the fare box.

Unfortunately, this possible James slyly told me that he was using his uncle's Smart Card - which is a no-no. Apparently this guy is not quite developmentally disabled enough to qualify for his own Smart Card. After all, he's able to run his own pedicab business and figure out how to scam the transit authority. Sadly, he's not smart enough to know that he shouldn't brag to employees of the transit authority that he's committing fraud against them.

I also think it's interesting to examine the timeline of James's Facebook conversation with the TA. It all took place within less than half an hour. That's pretty close to real time. Actually it probably was real time if you factor in how long it must have taken James to type his comments while apparently wearing boxing gloves. After James's last bout of gibberish, the good folks at the TA seemingly had had enough, for they had no response to that. But kudos to the TA for trying to give credence to this guy's "problem". It's too bad he was too out of it to realize that someone was actually trying to help him.

Can't You Spell?

2011-09-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Grandrimpy spotted this terrible missing letter on Grandrimpyette One's little box of makeup from the Disney Channel show "Wizards of Waverly Place".

Plenty of Time for Comments from the Public

2011-09-27T14:53:00.000-07:00

I may be playing with fire here, posting boo-boos by the transit authority for which I work, but I couldn't resist when I saw that they were apparently planning on having a 14-hour-long unmet transit needs meeting.

Yet So Far

2011-09-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

For more Strawberry Fields humor, click here.

They were close, too. I would say they weren't more than about fifty feet from where I was standing.

Please Vote (Again)!

2011-09-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Click here to vote

Hey, folks! Thanks to everyone who nominated The Punctuator! to be a finalist in "Best Grammar Blog of 2011" contest at Grammar.net. With your help, I made it into the finals, along with 76 other nominees.

Now I need your help again. Now it is time to go and cast your final vote for this blog. Judging by the number of votes already received by some blogs, I don't expect to make it into the top three, but it would be fun to see how high I can climb.

What belonging to Tee do you wish me to airbrush?

2011-09-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

An apostrophe catastrophe at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California, which we visited on Labor Day this year.

Vege's

2011-09-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry this isn't a better picture - I had to snap it fast because the farmer (just visible on the left in the red shirt) was in his yard, and I didn't want any questions about my intentions in and rights to be taking pictures of his sign. It doesn't help matters that he chose to use an old piece of chalk board with permanent grid lines on it, and it's behind a wire fence.

All that aside, the sign says "vege's" and "tomato's". Although, now that I think about it, "vege's" may not be terribly wrong - after all, if you decided to abbreviate "vegetables" by leave out the "table" part, and you wanted to acknowledge the omission with an apostrophe, the result would indeed be "vege's". However, I don't think that was what was going on in Mr. Farmer's mind.

Wait! Maybe the farmer is named "Vege"! Well, that still wouldn't explain the "tomato's". Sorry, Farmer John, this is an all-around fail.

Collectivile

2011-09-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

Collectibles (or collectables if you prefer) is kind of a strange word, mainly because of the alternative spellings. The "-ibles" version has always looked kind of weird to me. But I'm quite sure that "collectibiles" is NOT an accepted spelling.

I hate to think what they might actually be selling in this establishment. They could have called them "collect-i-galls"! Har. I kill me.

New Page

2011-09-17T23:23:00.001-07:00

Please be sure to check out my new page, an homage to the moribund Why A Tittle?.

Help a Fellow Out?

2011-09-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

Howdy, lovely readers! Say, you look sharp today. Schmooze, schmooze.

Well, enough about you. Let's talk about me! I've just found out that The Punctuator! has been nominated as one of the best grammar blogs of 2011 by Grammar.net. I'm very honored.

I need at least five readers (I know that's asking a lot, since I only seem to have two) to vote for this blog (here) in order to land on the short list for the final voting.

Won't you be dears and go and vote for your humble Punctuator? I'd be terribly grateful.

Thanks.

Visitors

2011-08-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

How many visitors? Is it just one, thus "visitor's", or more than one, giving us "visitors'"?

I suppose it's all a moot point, though - I never see anyone parking in this lot, which is outside an oil refinery near where I work.

This is an example of a case where saying something like "visitor parking" (or "...passenger safety" rather than "...passengers [with missing apostrophe] safety) - while perhaps not grammatically correct - would sound fine and eliminate any confusing apostrophe issues.

Alpine Apostrophe Catastrophe

2011-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

click to embiggen

This is a little hard to see, and I apologize. Mountain Town seems to trot out this banner over their main street whenever nothing else banner-worthy is going on. In case you can't make it out, it says, "IT'S OUR PLANET. LETS SUPPORT IT. RECYCLE!"

I think it's interesting that they got "it's" right but blew it on "lets".

TD's

2011-07-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

I spotted this apostrophe catastrophe (I'm talking about "Sequence Lead's", since I don't really bother about people putting an apostrophe the plurals of acronyms or abbreviations) during the credits for Kick Ass.

If you'd like to know more about what sequence leads do (I had never heard of them before) see here.

Rectangle-ish

2011-07-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist snapping a picture of this package from a disposable tablecloth we bought for a recent birthday party. There's nothing terribly wrong with it, but "rectangular" would have hit my ear much better. I like how they call it a "tablecover" since it most certainly is not cloth. My favorite touch is the little "rectangle" under a picture of a rectangular table. You know, just in case there was any doubt.

Retarded

2011-07-23T21:48:00.000-07:00

All of our buses have retarders, a kind of engine brake that slows the vehicle when you take your foot of the accelerator. One type of bus has the word abbreviated as you see above. It struck me the other day that in order to be really correct it should read "RET'D'R".

Actually, shortening it at all seems kind of unnecessary since "retarder" only has one more letter than "applied", although "applied" has some skinnier letters than "retarder".

MySpace, not Facebook? OMG!

2011-07-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

Duplexity

2011-07-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

Click to embiggen

Sorry this is a little hard to read. I had snap it quick from across four lanes while my bus idled nearby, and the zoomer on my camera isn't the greatest.

As you can see, it says "Pinewood Duplexs", which of course is an incorrect spelling of "duplexes".

I was doing a quick search on the internet to see if "duplexs" is an acceptable form of the word (it isn't - and just because a bunch of people on the internet are doing it doesn't make it right) when I ran across this even more egregious mangling of the word:

http://www.family-homebuilders.com/Duplexs/Duplexs.html

Sweetness

2011-06-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods, but around these parts our Laotian immigrants have carved out their own niche industry growing and selling strawberries and other berry-type fruits.

Interestingly, their little farm-shops all look the same: the sheds from which they sell the fruit look like they were slapped together from scrap lumber, and the signs usually look like they were all made by the same person. It's like the various farmers have unwittingly created a sort of chain store effect, like the way all McDonald's or Home Depots look the same.

This particular sign is a little different than most. "Strawberry" is almost always singular on the signs ( I always imagine that there is just one large berry for sale), but unlike this sample, it's usually spelled correctly. Usually the signs don't feature berry art. My favorite part of this one, however, is the "sweet". Are the quotations ironic - the berries actually being sour? I doubt it. The maker of this particular sign is probably second or third generation and is hip to the lingo of Kids Today®.

More College Town Dumbness

2011-06-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

College Town is Dumb, Too

2011-06-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had been driving my bus past this sign on the far northern edge of College Town for a few weeks before I took a good look at it and noticed they had misspelled "Meridian Rd".

Volvo's

2011-05-30T19:13:00.001-07:00

My Town is Dumb

2011-05-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

I used to be careful about not revealing the name of my town of residence in my blogs, but I sort of blew my cover over at Raise The Thunderbeam! in my excitement over our new Sonic Drive-In (still delicious). I could have cropped out the name of the town in this and the following picture, but I think it would have lost some of its impact.

This sign has bothered me for awhile. It's exceedingly rare to see punctuation of any sort in these roadway signs, so this is odd just for that reason. Further, I couldn't figure out why the maker of the sign thought the comma was necessary. Was he trying to say that both Oroville AND its historic commercial district could be accessed from the next exit? Which of course they can, but that sort of goes without saying, doesn't it?

My confusion deepened further when I noticed that the corresponding sign on the other side of the freeway...

...is comma-free. I would have thought that both signs would have been made at the same time, so why the difference? I'm glad at least one of them is traditional (i.e., comma-less).

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices seems pretty clear on the subject of punctuation:


click to embiggen

I must say, they didn't specifically mention commas. Perhaps the maker of the first sign was aware of this seeming loophole, and in his mind that comma was needed in order to avoid confusion: "By golly, I'm not going to have anyone thinking that Oroville and its historic commercial district are anything less than two separate entities, so this sign is going to have a comma, dammit!"

Maybe he thought that "historic commercial district" was a descriptor of Oroville, like saying something like "Merced, Gateway to Yosemite" (I'm not making that up). Oh, why am I trying to make excuses for the mysterious sign-maker? Let it go, Rimpy, let it go. necessary

Repair's

2011-05-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

I've railed about it in the past, and will no doubt continue to do so, but it's one thing if a business owner were to make his own sign and make mistakes in it, but it's quite another when the business owner pays someone else - a purported professional in the sign-making business - and that person makes mistakes, with the tacit approval of the person who hired him to make the sign. After all, the person paid for the sign as-is and didn't request any correction.

The most obvious error here is, of course, the apostrophe in "repair's", but "inshop" should be "in-shop", or at the very least "in shop".

The One That Brought Me Back

2011-05-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

I've explained why I briefly stopped blogging over at RTT!, and the same pretty much applies to this blog, with the possible added condition that to some extent, I was starting to feel a little mean for constantly snarking on other people's mistakes (Peoples'? People's? Which is it? Crap! See? I'm no good at English, either. Actually, see here).

Then I saw this:

So many apostrophe catastrophes in one sign! At least they were consistent. It was just too juicy to pass up. Granted, the maker of the sign may be ESL, given the nature of the business (although they seem to have nailed the "for catering info." stuff). I don't care if I'm mean - this aggression against our apostrophes will not stand!

Now that I look at the alleged "thumb's up" sign the cartoon man is flashing us, the more convinced I am that he's actually giving us the finger.

Pocket Full of Fail

2011-05-18T07:59:00.000-07:00

Dollar stores are great places to find errors in English on packaging. Of course, this was supposed to say "pocket screwdriver set".

I wish I could upload images from my memory (you know, my actual physical brain's memory) onto the interwebs, because once many, many years ago I had the sad fortune to be sitting in the Sacramento Greyhound bus terminal. It was just before or after Christmas. Across from me sat a rather strange character (what a surprise at a bus terminal!). He was holding a box containing a set of pliers which he had either just received as a gift, or was about to give as a gift (or maybe both!). I thought there was something funny about the words on the box. To make sure, I stared as hard as I could at the box without trying to look as though I was staring at the guy holding it. Sure enough, where it should have said "pliers set", it instead said "pilers set". Hilarious.