Category Archives: Picky Punctuation Points

How punctuation changes or destroys meaning

Dictionary, 2020-2021 Edition

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Last year yielded a number of words I wish I hadn’t had to learn and fervently hope not to need much longer. To wit:

pod Formerly: a container, like the inedible green things that peas grow in or, in trendy offices and schools, a partly-enclosed seating area for work or study. Currently: the group you can hang out with indoors and maskless, knowing that everyone’s germs have already mingled. Also a verb, as in “I podded up with my son and his family after I passed quarantine.”

doomscroll An unfortunately apt verb, arising from the fact that nearly everything on our screens these days foretells impending doom in one form or another. An inadvisable practice because if the sky is falling (pretty much the only disaster we haven’t had to worry about in the last 12 months), it will fall whether we obsess about it or not.

Blursday Vague but useful time marker for when you never see anyone or anything new (see pod, doomscroll above).

Murder Hornet As if 2020 weren’t bad enough. And yes, they’re real.

Also real is this sign from the window of a dentist’s office:

Presumably the first option makes you not care that your teeth really need the second.

I could go on (and on and on, see Blursday) but instead I’ll end this post with two words I do NOT understand, as in why anyone would ever select them: X Æ A-12 and !!!!!. The first is the name of Elon Musk and Grimes’s son, the second this deli:

X Æ A-12 is still with us, but !!!!! went out of business long before the pandemic, perhaps because employees couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone. “Hello, you’ve reached !!!!!, may I take your order?” is a little hard to imagine.

Feel free to send me your own candidates for words you wish you didn’t know. Happy Blursday to you, and happy new year, too.

Paging Autocorrect

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Before autocorrect, I’d sometimes proofread my work and find hte. “C’mon, computer,” I’d think in exasperation. “You know I meant the!” Autocorrect has brought its own problems, of course, but it certainly would improve these mangled expressions:

I can think of a lot of reasons to swing open cell doors, but criminalized onion relish isn’t one of them. Side point: Is Prime topside a real cut of beef?

Next is a sentence a friend found in a concert announcement:

We’re excited to open the series with a performance featuring renounced vocalist. . . .

I’ve omitted the name of the renounced vocalist, who is innocent, I’m sure. The copywriters, on the other hand — let’s just say that if we weren’t already in pandemic lockdown, I’d recommend they serve detention.

Whoever wrote this should do serious time for Crimes Against Language:

The spelling mistakes don’t bother me. If I can type hte, I can forgive becarse and unassemboed. Ditto for the odd capitalization and punctuation. What gets me is the last sentence. Is there really a correct way to cause a series of problems? Extending the point, is there an incorrect way? Just thinking about this is enough to make the screws loose.

Keep your screws tight, try not to renounce anyone, and don’t criminalize condiments. And stay fsae. I mean safe. Thanks, Autocorrect.

Precarious

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The world is precarious nowadays: danger seems to, and in most instances actually does, surround us. As a break from the deadly and serious, here are a few threats that may bring a smile and no damage whatsoever to anything other than the English language.

For the bad-breakup crowd:

For want of an apostrophe, a boy friend was lost. Well, turned into cash, which I’m pretty sure is illegal, no matter how toxic the relationship was. Side point: How do you turn cash into ca$h other than typographically? And why would you want to?

Although unemployment has risen sharply, I’m hoping no one is desperate enough to apply for this job:

Grilled man? I don’t even want to think about it.

And then there’s this placard*:

*Zero-star review from Marie-Antoinette and Thomas Cromwell.

As if we needed one more thing to worry about in 2020:

My recommendations: be kind to your ex-whatever, don’t barbecue yourself, watch the scissors, and stay off the sidewalk. Be safe!

How Do I Look?

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I’ve been Zooming around a lot lately. I’ve had virtual dinners with friends, virtual classes (on both sides of the virtual desk), virtual doctor visits, and some virtual interviews about my new book. (Yes, this is a shameless plug for 25 Great Sentences and How They Got That Way, which debuted this week.) What I haven’t had is the ability to ignore my appearance while Zooming. I suspect I’m not alone. In fact, I bet the first humans fretted over their skin and hair whenever they knelt to drink from a pond.

These New York City signs, snapped pre-pandemic, indicate a whole new level of obsession. First up, skin:

I admit that German Black Forest sounds authoritative, though why those ingredients should surpass, say, the Appalachians I could not explain. And what has to happen for something to be wild crafted? Is a deer or a bear involved? A squirrel? For me, the words that tip this sign into lunacy are the last three. Does anyone create a system designed not to work?

A little more skin:

Given the lack of hyphens, this shop may be offering a consultation about the camera you use to check your scalp. Or, the store may have its own special scalp camera. Either way: eww. Why would you want to stare at follicles and record the experience for posterity?

Now, hair. Here’s a message I agree with:

Keep each tress to yourself, please! It should be easy to avoid passing one, if you’re Zooming. Not so easy, but much more important: stay safe!

In Case of . . .

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“Emergency” seems like an important topic these days. Given all that’s going on in the world, it’s easy to panic. Here’s a sign from someone who obviously has:

I’m not here to judge whether step-sitting constitutes an emergency. For all I know, plopping on the staircase might slow a life-saving organ transfer. I do know that the sign-writer has a punctuation emergency, specifically the soon-to-be worldwide shortage of exclamation points. I mean, we can only produce so much punctuation, despite working 24/7 to churn it out! (or out!!!). Be reasonable, people.

And if you can’t be reasonable, at least be friendly:

My first thought, after I blessed the sign-writer for the single exclamation point, was “speak for yourself,” because for many of us, “emergencies” are definitely not “welcome.” Though I guess if you’re bored, the right emergency can add a little zing to your day.

So can a mistranslated phrase:

Yes, help for those pesky infernos is on the way, “to crash in event of fire.” With apologies to the Borg (Star Trek’s best villains, in my opinion), assistance is futile.

I Can Only Hope

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When Pandora opened her mythical box and the world’s evils flew out, what remained was hope. In these signs, grammar and spelling and punctuation have taken flight. This post concerns what I hope remains. First, skill with scissors:

I hope the proprietors are good barbers, because the salon is certainly not wasting any energy inserting an apostrophe in kids’ (or kid’s, if only one child is welcome as a “walk-in”). Fortunately, men’s is properly punctuated.

This sign directs my hope to falling (actually, NOT falling) masonry:

What do I hope? That the company maintaining the exterior walls looming over my head in NYC is better at pointing, painting, piping, and venting than it is at spelling. Verticle? Seriously? Moving on to moving:

Here I hope that every client’s move is a great experience. Were I to use this firm (not that I’m going anywhere except on vacation), I would hope for better grammar (our employees our?) and punctuation (safe positive?).

Last but definitely not least:

Where do I start? Spelling: seperate or softner? Subject-verb agreement: work include? Punctuation: double quotation marks for the first line and single for the second? And why any quotation marks at all? I think I’ll have this shop clean my clothes, which I hope will be handled with more care than this sign.

Hy-phen

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I couldn’t resist inserting a hyphen where it doesn’t belong, “hyphen” being, well, un-hyphenated in proper English. I hope the title balances the scales a bit, because so often hyphens are omitted where they’re sorely needed. In this sign, for instance:

Okay, I admit I’m taking this one personally. My name is Woods, and I do have a kitchen. I also have a “specialty” (grammar), but except when I’m trying to follow a poorly written recipe, my “specialty” and “cooking” don’t intersect. Hence the need for a hyphen. If I’m “Specialty-Cooking Woods,” I’m frying a predicate nominative or baking an adjective with, perhaps, an adverbial sauce. If the hyphen slides to the right, this company delivers “Specialty Cooking-Woods.” I prefer to think of those products as cedar, oak, or something similar, though if the owners pay me enough, I’ll make dinner. My specialty is “Clean-Out-the-Refrigerator Soup.”

Before I leave this sign, I should address “Gourmet Hardwood Charcoal.” A “gourmet,” the dictionary tells me, is “a connoisseur of delicacies.” Thus this sign evokes foodies chowing down on “hardwood charcoal.” This is not a hyphen problem. It’s a dental, or perhaps a “Don’t you have anything better to do?” problem. Next up, employment:

Leaving aside the “team” issue (though customers are often treated as the competition), I’m choosing to focus on “Part Sales Mate.” Huh? If the position is “part-sales,” what’s the other part? Or is the job selling a “part”? And what’s with the “mate”? Are the owners seeking a “part-mate”? Part-mate, part-something else? I’m leaving this one in the “life’s too short to worry about stuff like this” bin.

Last, for today at least, as hyphen-problems reappear as often as villains in superhero films:

Two townhouses? Two compounds, each with two buildings? And in a “double garden,” do the veggies and flowers appears in pairs?

That’s it for today. I off in search of a garden, single or double, with or without gourmet woods.

Individual, or Strip?

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Really, it’s not a choice I have ever made or ever plan to make. But apparently some people do need to decide between “Individual, or Strip.” My question, in addition to why there’s a comma before “or,” concerns how an “Eyelash Application” decision is made:

On second thought, I don’t really want to know. I’d rather ponder still another eyelash dilemma:

So, a single eyelash walks into a bar . . . and gets 50% off? Or is the “first Eyelash” 50% off and all the others offered at the regular, or even double-the-regular price? (Sidepoint: Why capitalize “Eyelash”?) The whole thing sounds like a math problem to me: Calculate how much it will cost to have all your eyelashes visit. The answer may depend on whether you want your “first Eyelash visit” to be “Individual, or Strip.”

One last outrage of English, courtesy of my friend Ellie:

Nicotine-puffers can read this notice in columns (“No Safety / Smoking First”) and nonpuffers line by line (“No Smoking / Safety First”). I’m a nonpuffer but also a noncombatant in the “what does it mean?” war. I do wonder whether the letters were applied to the boat “Individual, or Strip.”

Where?

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If you feel your life lacks direction, take heart. None of these signs will help you, but they will show you that you’re not alone. The first example comes from my friend Ellie:

It’s hard to know where to begin my comments. “In Side” and “Use As Credit At Pump” caught my eye (caught as in “fish hook”). I admit I’m fond of “Inconvenius,” but it’s not a direction, so I’ll leave that and the apostrophe problems alone.

I snapped the next photo on a New York City bus that crosses Central Park:

“Traverse”? I don’t think so! “Traverse” is a verb, and anyway every New Yorker (except whoever wrote this sign) knows that the bus crosses the “transverse.”

This one is more a “who?” than a “where?” but it’s too good to pass up:

Nice to know that we “pedesterians” have a place to walk. At least the signwriter consulted an etiquette book (saying “please”), if not a dictionary or spell-check program. This signwriter did both:

I could question the capitalization rules applied here, but I behave Graciously. You should too.

Nutritional Information Needed

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It’s hard enough these days to know what to eat and drink. There are Keto, Paleo, and for all I know Beto diets. Nor do these signs don’t make the situation easier. In fact, they give rise to questions, which I pose here after each.

How many Arancini could Could Cuts cut if Could Cuts could cut Arancini?

What does a social taste like? And is tasting a social really an event?

Relying on sound, not spelling: Do letter carriers bring Poast Pork to your table?

It’s possible to pay for wine with an I.D? Alternate question: does wine carry its I.D. in a wallet?

Do diners with extra-strong teeth chew plates fresh from the kiln? Also, is there a worldwide shortage of hyphens?

Feel free to answer my questions, or pose your own.