Tag Archives: English usage

How Are You?

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I’m fine, thanks. I hope you are too. But if you’re not, any number of businesses in New York City will help you out. Take this one, for instance:

How much for a couple of hours of pride?

How much for a couple of hours? A lifetime supply?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-esteem low? No problem. Just buy or rent some “pride.” Send some to your friends, too. But if you use this company, check the destination carefully:

Destinations within the city are NOT covered.

Destinations within NYC are NOT covered. No peace of mind there!

This shipping company isn’t revealing which places have “peace of mind.” Can’t you just picture the conversation:

CUSTOMER: Please send this package to Los Angeles.

CLERK: Sorry. Too much anxiety there.

It could be, given the state of the world, that this company ships only to Bhutan, which is famous for measuring the “Gross National Happiness” of its people. Maybe they also cover a couple of communes left over from the Sixties.

Never fear. If you can’t send pride (or anything else) with that shipping company, try money:

Whose friends?

Whose friends?

Just a few questions first: Whose money is the app sending? To the bank’s friends? To your friends? How many of your friends? And what if you don’t have any friends at “a growing number of other banks”? Or any friends in your bank? Or any friends at all? Oh wait: Then you can rent some pride, realize that you’re actually quite popular, and zap fifty bucks through the app. Problem solved.

Take a break from debate

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Pretty much everyone I know has been debating The Debate since it ended, analyzing every facial expression, body movement, and comment. It’s time to take a break!  Apply your analytical skills to these signs and answer the questions that follow. Send me your answers, but don’t expect any prizes. Sign number one:

Not an ordinary palm.

No ordinary palms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Questions: Is your palm special? Is it worth ten dollars?

On to sign number two:

Shorten your doctors here.

Shorten your doctors here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What sort of alteration does this shop offer to professionals? Does it nip in a billowy lawyer, cut up a surgeon, or dye a mortician? OR – Do they think other shops employ amateur tailors?

And sign number three, from an awning on a busy Manhattan street:

 

Serving Manhattan's farm animals.

Serving Manhattan’s farm animals.

 

Does East 74th Street qualify as “country”? Do the proprietors believe that farmers will bring their livestock there? Or do the proprietors need “professional alteration” (see sign number three)?

Now for my favorite:

What's a "tworl"?

What’s a “tworl”?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this a line from “Jabberwocky”? If not, what does it mean?

Bad Mood

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New Yorkers are not normally celebrated for their cheery outlook, and current events haven’t improved the mood around the city. So this photo, sent by my friend Catherine, seems particularly relevant right now:

All natural ingredients!

All natural ingredients.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gripe jelly – gives a whole new slant on “you are what you eat,” doesn’t it? If your New Year’s resolution was to be more peaceful,  you may want to avoid the jelly at this Lexington Avenue deli.

Moving on, here’s a sign from a truck parked on East 78th Street:

I can break my remote all by myself, thanks.

Remote control breaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was under the impression that most people break the remote all by themselves. I do it all the time, usually by dropping it in a bowl of whatever I’m eating while I watch TV. But if this sign is accurate, you can hire someone else for that chore. Busy New Yorkers, take note. Alternate interpretation: If it’s too much trouble to attend, say, a political debate and bang your head against the wall in frustration, a techie will break your skull with a keystroke at a distant (probably outsourced) computer company. How convenient.

By the way, if anyone actually understands the meaning of “remote control breaking,” please let me know. In the meantime, snack on some gripe jelly and enjoy your bad mood.

Curation Nation

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I spend a fair amount of time in NYC’s museums, so I’m accustomed to thinking of “curate” as something an art expert does. Indeed, the primary definition of this verb is “to select, organize, and look after items in a collection or exhibition.”  So I was surprised to see this sign over a display of snacks:

Separating forged from authentic potato chips?

Keeping the customer safe from forged potato chips.

Okay, back to the dictionary, where I found that you can curate “content or merchandise using professional or expert knowledge.” The sign is correct if a professional snackpicker selected the food. Cynic that I am, though, I couldn’t help thinking that the advertising and marketing of this merchandise benefited more from “expert knowledge” than nutrition and taste did. I declined to test my theory because a glance at the price tags showed that curated snacks cost a lot more than just-throw-it-on-the-shelf stuff.

Once the word was stuck in my mind, I noticed it often in The New York Times. Sometimes the definitions quoted above applied: “The web has gotten so big that you need people to curate it.” No argument there, unless you’re a fan of the candidates-are-from-another-planet sort of story, in which case you’re against the act of curating, not the use of the word.

Other “curate” sentences stretched the definition: “Sometimes you see veggie burgers made with 100 ingredients, a kitchen-sink burger,” she said. “It’s better when you curate a burger.” Here “curate” seems to mean “select,” but I’d opt for curating the ingredients of the burger, not the burger itself.

An even greater stretch shows up in this sentence:  “I started to curate this idea.” Now “curate” is closer to “create,” though you could make a case that the speaker sifted through many possibilities and organized the harvest into a coherent idea.

The one that really got me was a comment from a rock star: “I’ll curate my own brand.” Leaving aside the question of whether a person can or should be a brand, my best guess is that this sentence returns to the museum context for “curate.” The star sees herself as a work of art!

Numbers Game

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In the spirit of “five out of four people don’t understand fractions,” I present these gems from math-challenged sign-makers:

How much more or less?

How much more and less?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forgive me for relying on logic here, but isn’t “more and less” a contradiction? Perhaps the writer meant “more or less,” a description that could apply to a penny and to a trillion bucks. At least that interpretation might be true.  “More and less,” on the other hand, could only mean . . . well, what could it mean? Ideas welcome.

And then there’s time. Einstein’s theory of relativity (but not math) is alive and well in NYC:

Long week.

Long week.

 

The above photo is from a store named Muji, where a week lasts thirty days. One can only hope that the employees are paid by the hour.

The next sign proves that government is just as “innumerate” (the number version of “illiterate”) as private enterprise:

Weak on "week."

Weak on the definition of “week.”

 

If anyone tells you that government employees indulge in four-day weeks, especially in the summer, whip out this sign. In New York City, Restaurant Week lasts 26 days.

 

“Punctuation”; Puzzles.

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The title looks strange — on purpose — and it’s no stranger than the random addition or removal of periods, commas, and quotation marks in NYC’s signs. I wrote about the placement of periods in “Stop Full Stop” (http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1364). In this post I expand on the puzzles of punctuation. First up is this photo, which my friend Erica Berenstein sent me:

Can you spot the period?

Can you spot the period?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reluctantly leaving aside the issue of capital letters, I can’t figure out the marketing advantage of placing a period after “dream” and nowhere else. True, the list separates the clauses (subject-verb pairs), but then why place any periods at all in this ad?

Microsoft takes a different approach to punctuation, as you see in these messages that popped up on my screen during a recent update:

And the comma is there because . . .?

And the comma is there because . . .?

 

The first part of the statement seems to be a shortened form of “we are getting things ready,” an independent clause. But if that’s the intended construction, the rules of Standard English don’t allow you to attach the first independent clause to the second (“Please don’t turn off your PC”) with a comma. Another possible interpretation is that “getting things ready” is an introductory participle, in which case the participle should modify the subject of the following clause. The problem with this explanation is that the subject of “please don’t turn off your PC” is an implied “you.” But “you” aren’t getting things ready. Microsoft is, or so it claims. By the way, there’s a period missing after “PC.” With such attention to detail, the upgrade promises to be buggy at best.

Here’s another Microsoft gem:

windows2

 

 

Okay, the words make sense, and the sentence begins with a capital letter. It ends with . . . nothing. No period. No exclamation point. Not even a question mark, which, given the state of internet security these days, would be more than appropriate.

Last one. Can anyone find a reason for these quotation marks?

P1020112

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m stumped. Feel free to send in your theories, properly punctuated, of course!

Busting what?

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Recently The New York Times quoted a politician’s reference to “ordinary people busting their necks.” Instead of thinking about the presidential campaign, socio-economic class, and other important issues, I got stuck on one question: Why “necks”?

When I was a kid, “busting” (or “breaking”) your neck was a description of physical danger, as in “slow down or you’ll bust your neck.” However, the politician was talking about people who work hard, day in and day out. What “ordinary people” were busting, linguistically, were body parts considerably closer to the floor than their necks.

Not to be coy: The phrase the politician should have used was “busting their butts.” But — “butt” isn’t always accepted in polite company. Hence the proliferation of euphemisms, such as “seat,”  “rear,” and “bottom.” And “butt” isn’t the only body-part word to land in the improper column. In the 19th century, ladies ordered “seat fixing,” not “rump steak,” and ate “chests” or a “slice of bosom” instead of chicken breasts.

But we’re in the 21st century, not the 19th. I searched the Internet to see whether the expression had changed. I found some videos with disturbing titles like “busting pimples on your neck,” which I wisely decided not to watch. I also found  references to “break ya neck” in song lyrics. Those were about sex — I think — not jobs.

So the politician’s comment was inaccurate. There’s a shock! At least this time the mistake was in word choice, not facts. I admit I may be missing something because I spend a lot of time “busting my neck” at the computer, composing this blog and writing books. And I also admit that in a campaign season filled with outrageous statements, retaining a bit of shame is somehow comforting.

Odds

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A quick search of The New York Times yields 137, 513 hits for the word “odd.” The earliest appeared in 1851, and the word shows up regularly thereafter – never more frequently than in this, well, odd presidential campaign. But this post isn’t about politics. It’s about the odd expressions I’ve seen lately, such as the one on this sign:

Non-renewal?

Non-renewal?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my apartment-rental years, I signed many leases, but never a “non-renewal” one. I wonder what this sort of lease stipulates. Your lease extends to never? Your new monthly rent is zero dollars? (See http://www.grammarianinthecity.com/?p=1477 for other nonsensical “zero” signs.)

Here’s another odd expression:

Specialized?

Specialized?

I saw this on the side of a truck. Apparently, the contractor “specialized” in bathroom renovations. Good to know, if you’re seeking a renovation in the past. Lacking a handy time-travel gadget, though, potential customers may see a problem here.

One more:

Apostrophe? Preposition?

Missing apostrophe? Preposition?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This sign screams “scam,” and not because of its odd wording, which I presume is the result of omitting the preposition “for” (I buy all cars for cash) and not an apostrophe (I buy all cars’ cash). But aside from grammar, who can buy “all cars”? And how much cash would it take? What would the buyer do with them? Odd indeed!

 

Magritte in NYC

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On this Bastille Day, I am pleased to report that Rene Magritte is alive and well and creating art in New York City:

"Ceci n'est pas une 'bike stand.'"

“Ceci n’est pas une ‘bike stand.'”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the sake of comparison, here is one of Magritte’s earlier works:

To see the original, go to Los Angeles.

To see the original, go to Los Angeles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In case you’re wondering about the power of art, I staked out this spot for a while, to see whether a bicycle would be chained to it.  New Yorkers do sometimes interpret a prohibition as a dare. But no bikes appeared. Either the sign is very effective or the glowering shop owner, who was standing next to this tree every time I passed, scares cyclists into compliance. Either way, enjoy Bastille Day. (Especially you, Don and Avram, my art historian friends.)

Best wishes

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In these days of anguish, I’ve noticed many New Yorkers trying harder to take care of each other. On the Third Avenue bus last Saturday night, the driver told departing passengers to “have a very, very, very good evening” or to “be happy, be happy, be extremely happy.” She repeated variations of these statement at each stop with intensity and, as far as I could tell, sincerity. When I got off the bus, she told me to “enjoy, really enjoy” myself. I was grateful for her concern.

Earlier that day, in a pub near the former World Trade Center, the waitress asked my husband and me how “you guys’s day” had been. She really seemed to want to know  and to hope that the answer was “good” or something even more positive.  I spent most of the afternoon trying to decide how to spell what I had heard, which sounded like “you guizes.” The traditional rule for possessive plurals ending in the letter S, such as “guys,” is to tack on an apostrophe after the S. But “you guys” isn’t a traditional plural. Instead, it’s one of the ways New Yorkers indicate that “you” refers to more than one person. (The other common local expression for the plural “you” is “youse” — effective, but not Standard English.) The pronoun you, of course, may be either singular or plural. Lucky waitress: She didn’t have to write down her thoughts or worry about grammar.

That task falls to me. My first idea was “you guys’ day.” That seemed wrong, though, because the pronunciation would be “you guize” — more direct address or a simple plural than possession. I considered writing the phrase as pronounced (“you guizes” or “you guyses”), but then where would I place the apostrophe? And without the punctuation mark, the possessive sense is lost.

I haven’t settled the question, though as you see, I opted for the grammatically incorrect but phonetically accurate “you guys’s.” Your thoughts are welcome — as was the sense of inclusion the waitress was going for. She didn’t want to exclude anyone, a sentiment that, universally applied, would create a better society. And, you guys, we really need that now.