Lately, every time someone mentions a problem with a doctor, prescription, or what physicians call procedures (which are operations to the rest of us), everyone nods and  cites Obamacare as the cause. (I have no idea whether they’re right.)

I’m therefore assuming that this problem too will be blamed on  the Affordable Care Act:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you have health insurances? This physical therapy office accepts them, or I should say it, because insurance has traditionally been correct only as a singular form. Following that rule, the sign should say health insurance plans or types of health insurance. However, the word may be changing to reflect the comparisons we all have to make these days between one health insurance plan and another. Recently I’ve seen several signs advertising clinics that accept many insurances or most insurances. Language evolves, and anyone who doesn’t like the direction of its evolution can always blame this expression on Obamacare (or politicians, who are always an easy and generally a justified target).

Here’s another plural issue, this time with a singular form (menu) in a spot where a plural makes more sense:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For non-New Yorkers, I should explain that the many restaurants delivering takeout food like to slip menus (plural) under the front doors of apartment buildings, hoping that hungry citizens returning from work will pick one up and order dinner from it. More likely, of course, is that a hungry citizen will step on a menu and do a floppy-armed dance maneuver to recover balance – and then retrieve the offending piece of paper and order dinner from it. Building superintendents and doormen wage war on menu-distributors and the mess they generate. This sign is one tactic, probably ineffective and definitely grammatically incorrect. It is, however, polite.

One more plural, with a twist:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The interesting part of this sign, on a phone store, is the third item: “Prepaid Refiles.” I don’t usually mock spelling, but this one was too tempting. Can’t you picture the clerk, file in hand, sawing away at your phone’s rough edges? Or placing the phone in a file marked “way too many photos” instead of “judicious use of photo capacity”? I’m assuming the sign-writer intended to say “Refills,” but perhaps not. I’m a novice in the phone world. In fact, when I go into a store to “refile” my device, the clerk generally laughs at its antiquity. So if there’s another meaning, please let me know.

Disclaimer: Part of this post originally appeared as a separate page under the category, “Signs of the City,” which I am gradually dismantling.