Also, the "s" isn't needed because the sign refers to a single intersection.
Here's something odd. Both of these were in a public restroom in the center of town. I cannot come up with any expla nation for this very curio us spa cing.
"Perge modo et qua te ducit via dirige gressum," said Venus to Aeneas.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Provincetown grammar
I took a close look at this apocatastrophe hoping that the speck in front of the "s" would turn out to be just a bit of dirt, but unfortunately....
Also, the "s" isn't needed because the sign refers to a single intersection.
Here's something odd. Both of these were in a public restroom in the center of town. I cannot come up with any expla nation for this very curio us spa cing.
Also, the "s" isn't needed because the sign refers to a single intersection.
Here's something odd. Both of these were in a public restroom in the center of town. I cannot come up with any expla nation for this very curio us spa cing.
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11 comments:
Dangerous Intersection is Ahead, maybe?
I have to commend whoever wrote those cardboard signs for his or her consistency. At least it wasn't carelesness that led to this mistake.
As for the top sign, I don't think it's gramatically incorrect because that it's a possessive rather than a plural 's. Of course that invokes - to me - a picture of a town with one dangerous intersection and a sign warning that the dangerous intersection is ahead rather than a dangerous intersection. But then if you knew the town well enough to know there was only one, you would probably know where it wasn, wouldn't you?
Oops! I was stupid in my previous comment. I meant that the 's was a contraction of is!
Dear Tankmontreal,
You are being veeeery generous, but as counsel for the defendant, you might just get them off on a technicality.
Dear SubtleKnife, you could be co-counsel for the defense with Tankmontreal, but I would throw your theory out of court on the grounds that the intersection doesn't possess anything.
The first sign needs to be posted here. The remaining signs need to be thro wn aw ay.
Actually, my first defensive thought was to go to the contraction of "intersection is".
So I would defend the signmaker-- but not their stupidity.
Perhaps the same signmaker hand made the other two?
There's a blog devoted just to that intersectional problem:
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
And the curiously-spaced signs: I know that restroom and I've seen the sign, at least one of them. Did you talk your way into the ladies' ? With a camera?
On second thought, you probably used your phone. But still.
Dear Tankmontreal,
Oddly, they were both in the men's room. Must be an epidemic of clot hes changing.
The apostrophe in "intersection's" works if you assume the driver knows there's an intersection but doesn't know where it is.
In the 80s, the route I took from Boston to the Cape went past two large trailers with the hand-painted message, "No job to large or to small." Parse that if you can.
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