Recently I took advantage of New York City’s IDNYC program, which gave me an official photo ID and a raft of free membership offers to some of the city’s best museums. In redeeming one of those membership offers at an institution I won’t embarrass by naming, I received an email thanking me for my “contribution of $0.00” and telling me that donations such as mine “support the work of the museum.” If that’s true, the museum is probably nearing bankruptcy.

Of course I know that what I was looking at was a form letter, a textbook example of the limitations of machine-generated prose that saves time and savages meaning. But you can’t blame a machine for this sign, which was posted at the entrance to a small plaza in Midtown:

Chain your bicycle to OO Bike Racks.

Nice to know that you can rest on as many feet of “linear” seating as your bottom requires, unless you prefer one of the “43 Movable Seating.” And what a strange expression that is! I’d call them “chairs,” but then I’m a grammarian, not a bureaucrat. The sign also informs me that I can chain my bicycle (or I could if it weren’t a stationary model permanently parked in my kitchen) to “00 Bike Racks” and quench my thirst from “00 Drinking Fountains.” At least the greenery is properly represented: I did count “04 Trees.”

Signs like this one are fairly common in New York. When my son was little, we used to go to what we called “Zero Trees Park,” a name inspired by the plaque proudly announcing the absence of plant life. My guess is that these signs record deals the building owners make with the city before construction begins — public amenities in exchange for a zoning variance. Inspectors can see the terms of the contract right there on the sign and verify that the owners have fulfilled their promises. Efficient, yes, but also silly. Couldn’t the sign just list what is supposed to be there, not what isn’t?  But that solution would require common sense, which all too uncommon in form letters and city officials.