Tag Archives: usage

What’s for Dinner?

4 Replies

Now that the holiday season has arrived, it seems appropriate to look at what we’re eating — not in terms of nutrition but rather identification. This is not always easy to do, as this label reveals:

How do crackers qualify as entertainment? They’ve always seem rather boring to me. I imagine the person who came up with this label decided consumers need to be told when to serve the product. But is it really so hard to figure out when to serve crackers? Are there rules for cracker serving, like a penalty if crackers show up in a lunch box?

On the same theme, take a look at this label for a vegan product, a Celebration Roast:

At least the label lets consumers know which veggies and fruit they’re eating when they tuck into a Celebration Roast. But stuffed implies a wrapper or a container (e.g. a turkey), and there’s no way to tell exactly what is stuffed with butternut squash, apples & mushrooms. The celebration? The cellophane the roast is packed in?

These signs offer specific (and useless) description:

Nice to know what shape my ham is in and the color palette and nationality of my cheese. And yes, I do know that American Cheese is the name of a processed product that bears a passing resemblance to cheddar. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that these signs lack essential information, such as whether the ham is cured or uncured and how many additives are present in a sandwich made from pear shape ham and yellow or white American cheese.

Bottom line: Please tell me what I am eating. Don’t tell me when I should eat it or what it looks like. Bon appetit!

Obviously! Or Not.

4 Replies

On some of my excursions around New York City, I find signs that are stunningly obvious, the equivalent of a message I once saw on a book of matches: “Warning — may cause fire.” Here’s one such sign:

Does the owner think anyone’s going to pay $26.00 for amateur haircuts & shaves? Professional would seem to be self-evident, given that someone is paying rent, utilities, and so forth to hang out inside and tend to customers’ tresses in exchange for money.

Also obvious is this sign I saw in Midtown:

If you were searching for a satellite, where else would you look? Under the sidewalk grate? Not obvious is what’s holding the satellite. A giant leash? A Star Trek magnetic field? Also, why are they holding it? Send the satellite into orbit, already! Despite the pandemic, rents in New York City are high, and Space is free.

Also unclear is the meaning of this message, which I glimpsed on the side of a van belonging to a cleaning service:

I have always assumed that every doorman in my building showers, with perhaps an occasional bath as a change of pace. That a doorman might opt for dry cleaning never even entered my mind. Now that the thought is there, though, I wonder whether the dry cleaning ticket is pinned or taped on, and to which body part. Actually, on further reflection, I’d rather not know.

One more puzzler, to balance out the pair of obvious signs earlier in this post:

The bar looks old, so I’m not questioning the age of the place but rather the quotation marks around 100, which are most commonly used to indicate a direct quotation. That doesn’t seem likely here. Nor is it likely that the marks signal doubt about the accuracy of the information enclosed by quotation marks, as in We listened to Henry’s “singing” until our eardrums ruptured. The dates show 100 years (2021 – 1921 = 100). So why quotation marks?

Obviously, I invite you to send me your theories.

Paging Autocorrect

7 Replies

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.

Hy-phen

2 Replies

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.

Food and Drink

2 Replies

Can’t do without food and drink, right? But I can certainly do without the silliness that appears permanently attached to them on the signs and menus of New York. This one, for instance:

Which hero are we talking about? Wonder Woman, in a traditionally female role? Batman, grilling in the Bat Cave (a traditionally male role)? Or The Flash, serving super-fast food? Also, how does a burger get “certified”? That last question is apparently a serious issue, as some meat producers object to the term “burger” for anything that doesn’t contain meat. They want to prohibit the term “veggie burger,” for instance, and substitute . . . well, that’s not clear. Maybe patty? disk? puck? The menus of America need a hero to step in and solve this language problem.

Speaking of menus:

I can’t decide whether this restaurant is patting customers on the back for ordering a treat that sounds vaguely nutritious or castigating them for ordering any pastry at all. Also, what’s with the “by”? I’d expect the preposition “from,” reserving “by” for works of art (a painting by Rembrandt, for example). I guess the restaurant wants customers to see these creations as masterpieces. And for all I know (I didn’t order any), they are.

I didn’t take advantage of what this sign offers, either:

At least it’s not “outdoor.” If I were ever tempted to grill myself, I’d prefer a little privacy.

Time to wash down all this food:

These days, it is indeed “special” to encounter honesty, which is reason enough to order and pay for two drinks.

Happy Halloween!

2 Replies

Before or after you hit the trick-or-treat trail, take a minute to enjoy  these holiday photos. This one comes from my friend Milton:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Punking” seems perfectly suited to the “trick” part of the Halloween slogan, don’t you think?

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is also a good fit for this holiday. The Morgan Library has a fine exhibit celebrating the 200th anniversary of the monster, who, by the way, has no name and is actually much less monstrous than most of the human characters in the book. (Frankenstein is the name of the doctor who sewed body parts together and animated the creature.) I learned a lot from the exhibition, including this information about early theatrical performances of the classic work:

Leave it to Mary Shelley, inventive in so many ways, to add an apostrophe and the letter S to a row of hyphens to create a possessive form of “the unnameable.”

Once Halloween is over and you’re fighting sugar rush and paying dental bills, you might plan for another holiday, one that tends to be stressful. Show this sign — sent by my friends Pilar, Naomi, and Aracelly — to any of your unruly offspring:

“Behave or I’ll drop you off.” Simple but effective! But before your kids call Children’s Protective Services, be sure to explain that you’re just punking them.

What’s Open?

Leave a reply

When my son was little, we couldn’t walk down our block without having the baker rush over with a piece of bread, the dry cleaner offer candy, and the deli clerk donate a cookie. Toddler paradise! When I walk down that same street with my granddaughter, her experience is different. So many stores have closed! E-commerce and, I’ve read, some unwise rent laws have led to a surge in vacancies. What’s open, and when? These signs offer absolutely no help:

Given this timetable, I expect another empty storefront soon. Here’s another:

I’m happy about the “Grand Open”; at least the storefront isn’t vacant. I do wonder whether the $29 price includes both feet. I also wonder how long after the “grand open” I’ll see this sort of sign:

Near where the “out business” used to be is this sign, professionally printed and posted all over a building under construction:

According to the dictionary, “amenities” are “desirable or useful features of a building or a place.”  This sign is okay — grammatically, at least. Winding through scaffolding to play billiards or to sit near a communal wine cellar before your apartment is constructed is not okay, at least for me. But if you don’t care, go for it.

Although the word is correctly used in the last sign, I couldn’t help thinking about another definition of “amenities”: “social courtesies.” Sadly, everything I see in our public life shows me that this sort of “amenities” is absolutely NOT “now open.” If we can’t find our way back to civility, I fear that soon we will also be “out business,” and not just from 11 to 12 each day.

Tense Teaching

5 Replies

Labor Day has passed, and school has begun. Like autumn leaves, rants from nonteachers about what’s wrong with our schools/teachers/kids pop up, exasperating pretty much everybody who’s ever actually entered a classroom and tried to educate some kids. It seems like a good time to examine a photo my friend Catherine, a fine teacher, sent me:

Catherine spotted this in a doctor’s office, where the medical staff either believed that their patients already knew everything or saw the task of educating them as hopeless. Or, more likely, the docs were too busy filling out insurance forms to tuck some pamphlets into the container.

But there’s another way to interpret this sign. It labels “education” as “patient.” In my opinion, that’s what true education is and what teachers must be. Patient people know that change takes time. And time is tense  (not the physical and emotional state, though “tense” is what anyone would feel after spending the day with twenty squirming, wish-it-were-still-summer, small beings). In grammar, tense creates a time frame.  

Teachers work in three tenses. They must take into account what their students already know (past tense) and what the kids are doing now (present tense), be it wadding gum into the spout of the water fountain or solving long division problems. Invisible but most important is the work teachers do in and for the future. Good teachers don’t simply impart information. They cultivate critical thinking, healthy life habits, and an appreciation of others’ perspectives. They don’t see immediate results. But those seeds grow, slowly. In the future, what teachers planted — they can only hope! — matures and ripens.

I have one more sign for all nonteachers espousing unfounded and unfunded ideas about education:

 

 

Politicians and pundits: Go ahead and disturb all the classes that aren’t “in session.” Then take a moment to thank teachers for creating our future.

Scratching an It

2 Replies

Pronouns create more problems per letter than any other part of speech, in my humble and completely unscientific opinion. You’d think that a scarcity of letters would open up fewer chances for error, but the opposite is true. Consider “it,” which is nearly as small as it gets, pun intended.

This sign is posted in a bathroom in a building owned and operated by a distinguished university, which shall remain nameless but not blameless:

I support the plea, the lavatory version of the Golden Rule, but not the pronoun. As the sentence is worded, “it” has to refer to “stalls and sinks.” Those items are clearly plural, and “it” is singular.

Now a few words from a distinguished newspaper, which shall also remain nameless:

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I first read this article, I thought that Loftsson’s whaling operation did not recognize “an international ban on commercial hunting.” Duh, I thought. They’re hunting; hence in the company’s view, the ban isn’t valid. A few minutes later, I realized that Iceland doesn’t recognize the ban. I probably would have caught on sooner had I had my morning coffee before reading the paper. But that’s why the rules for pronoun antecedents exist: to keep things clear even in the absence of caffeine.

Last is this caption, posted near the excavation of a Roman site. Mindful of my own frequent errors in the second and third languages I’ve studied, I’m ignoring the obvious translation issues. Instead, I’m focusing on the last word, “it”:

The photo is a bit unclear, so I reproduce the text here:

“Opening a settlement, to public visitors, would make some interventions destined for restoration, conservation, and spreading. The objective is to guarantee that the remains, mosaics, walls or paintings, wouldn’t deteriorate more than they are and, at the same time, visitors could understand them. Its appearance is never the same as the one in the excavation, neither is the one that had while the Hispanic-romans were using it.”

I dare you to define “it” with certainty. After reading other signs posted around the excavation, I realized that I was looking at the remains of a bath house and latrine. This “it,” in other words, has a lot in common with the modern restroom where I found the first sign. The more pronoun errors change, it seems, the more they stay the same.

 

Service with a . . .

Leave a reply

The rule used to be “service with a smile,” to which employees in stores and restaurants at least paid lip service. (Pun intended.) The rule has changed. Witness this sign, which my granddaughter spotted in a flower market:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I certainly sympathize with selfie-opponents, having been backed into, stepped on, and nearly blinded by people more interested in proving that they’d seen something than in actually seeing it. Think for a moment: the amazing place/thing/person that prompts people to take selfies is behind them. And unless, like countless generations of parents, you claim to have eyes in the back of your head, you aren’t seeing what you’re snapping. My sympathy for the flower seller doesn’t change the fact that her customers aren’t receiving any smiles here.

Or here, as noted by my friend Sharon:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grammatically speaking, an introductory verb form (“To Better Serve You,” which by the way displays a strange set of capital letters) modifies the subject. In this sentence, the implied subject is “you,” as you are the one who is supposed to “Refrain From Cell Phone Use.” I’m not quarreling with the sentiment expressed by this sign. Everything I said about selfie-shooters applies to many cellphone-chatters also. But in the sign, grammatically, no one is serving “You.”  The sign really means “shut up and let me do my job and we’ll both be happier or at least not hate each other quite as much.” I think. The logic befuddles, but at least the sign writer was polite.

As was this one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Kindly”? Traditionally, that adverb was for the customer: “Kindly refrain from throwing paper money at the waiter,” or something like that. Here the restaurant believes that it is acting “kindly” by reminding you that you’re a dinosaur if you think you can pay with currency. I do like “cashless,” which, judging from the prices, isn’t going to be a problem for the owners unless their bank account is hacked.

I’ll end with refreshing honesty:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I prefer wine, but I think I’ll go to this restaurant anyway. Who can resist “mediocre service”?