Tha Speling Poleece R Haveing Funn Hear

I've been making fun of misspellings on business signs since pretty much the earliest days of this blog (click the "Silly Signage" tag at the bottom of this post to see more). But today, the Dallas Morning News got into the act, and they're having a lot of fun with it:

A cup of regualar coffee sounds like the perfect way to start your day.

Wouldn't some cheep gas be nice? But if you park your car, you've been warned: No in-and-out priviliges.

These mangled spellings – on real-life signs around the Dallas-Fort Worth area – underline the obvious: Spelling isn't always high on our list.

And our grammar ain't that good, too.

And I think I forgot to blog about this one a while back, but some people are becoming the Grammar Police on their own:

Last month, two men were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year after getting busted for fixing errors on a sign in Grand Canyon National Park.

The men travel the country correcting signs as part of the Typo Eradication Advancement League.

And, yeah, they might have crossed the line by messing with a historical sign in a national park, but they've got a point.

Across the country and locally, our land is littered with signs, posters, ads, menus – you name it – that are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.

In some cases, human spell-checkers battle these boo-boos by fixing the errors on their own. Others snap pictures and trash the typos on their blogs.

Yup, the latter sure applies here.

Read the whole thing, which has some really funny examples, including one that I've blogged about before: A mangled version of the word "inconvenience" (which, this time, comes out as "inconveinance"). There are also some great examples of mangled grammar in school term papers, as collected by an SMU writing instructor with the great Grammar Police name of "Diana Grumbles."

And, as I've asked on earlier posts on this subject, please feel free to submit your own examples of silly signage or garbled grammar in the comments.

An Inconvenient Word?

Tonight at dinner, I went into the men's room at a local restaurant and saw an unusual thing: The baby-changing table was out of order. I don't think I'd ever seen that before, and I wonder how they found out that it broke; I hope that no actual baby was harmed in the discovery of this condition.

But what really made me laugh was the sign attached to it:

BABY CHANGING TABLE IS BROKEN
PLEASE DO NOT USE
SORRY FOR THE INCONVIENENCE
It seems to me that the word "inconvenience" gets misspelled all the time, especially in situations like this. Tonight's spelling was new, however; I usually see it as "inconvience." Is it that hard of a word to spell, or is it only hard when you're probably doing several things at once? (Note yesterday's discussion on multitasking.) And yes, I'm sure there are a zillion typos in this blog (in addition to the normal accidental leetspeak of things like "teh," my biggest one lately is typing "sqaure" for "square"), but to me that's a different kind of mistake than missing something on a handwritten sign.

Certainly, someone putting up a sign to tell people about an out-of-order object probably aren't worrying about their spelling, but the lack of same has caused quite a bit of amusement for me over the years. Perhaps my two favorites come from opposite ends of my life: One was this past year, when one of the drinks on a soda fountain was listed as OFF HORDER instead of "out of order," while the other happened way back when I was about nine years old, when we pulled up to a gas station and noticed that one of the pumps was BROKED. (And there have been lots of funny restaurant signs as subjects of this blog over the years.)

What is your easiest word to misspell, or mis-type? And what's the funniest misspelled word or awkward phrase you've ever seen on a sign?

Cool gadget of the week: Give it up for the world's first transparent toaster.

Honey, does this postcard make me look fat? Staffers of Dean Hrbacek, a Houston-area man running for Congress sent out a flyer with a picture of his head attached to someone else's skinnier body. Hrbacek (who used to be the mayor of Sugar Land, where my parents live) supposedly hasn't had time to pose for a full-body shot, according to his campaign manager.

Sonic Sign Silliness Returns

In the early days of this blog, I used to make fun of the bad grammar, spelling and punctuation on the marquee sign of a local Sonic drive-in; it happened many, many different occasions. It had been a long time since I'd seen an error-filled sign, but this week, a local outlet had the following message:

IT'S BACK SPICY SOUTH
WEST SUPER SONIC BURGER
This was not the same location that had all the mistakes in the past, but the same sign did invite us to TRY A ORANGECOOL BREEZE a few years ago. (It's fun to bring back an old topic every now and then.)

Silly criminals, part 1: A would-be motorbike thief in England was caught after he left his severed finger at the scene.

Silly criminals, part 2: Meanwhile, in New Zealand, another criminal was caught after people recognized him in a YouTube video.

Silly criminals, part 3: A woman in Wisconsin was arrested for barking at a police dog.

Everybody sing: "I wish that I had used a parking meter; then my boss would not be mad at me-e-ee." Chicago police ticketed the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile for illegal parking.

Stupor-Sonic

I just had to laugh...a lot. Yes, the Sonic Drive-In whose sign I make fun of on a regular basis is at it again. Today when I drove by, it said:

SUPERSONIC
ANDRINGS
$3.99

I've never had "andrings" before, have you? I wonder if they taste like chicken...

And I bet if you asked the sign dude, he'd say "umm...delicious." (Go here if you don't get the joke.) The funny part is that there was plenty of room on the sign, but absolutely no effort was made to separate the "and" from the "rings."

(Also, as Dave Barry might say, "Supersonic Andrings" would be an excellent name for a rock band.)

But wait--there's more! On my way back, I got to see the other side of the sign, which was almost priceless:

TRY ARE
NEW
MINT BLAST

So I'm trying to decide: Is the sign dude (or dudette, maybe) from a foreign country and just learning English, or is he just a functionally illiterate American? At any rate, I wonder if the managers have any idea how ignorant it makes them look--not that I'm complaining, mind you, because they've now given me blog-fodder for three months in a row.

Oh well--at least they're not serving hungry coneys anymore.

MORE RANDOM STUFF FROM THE DAY: A quick conversation this morning at the Starbucks in Super Target as I read my paper...

STARBUCKS WORKER: Where did you happen to find a newspaper?
ME: Umm...in my front yard.

OK, that wasn't as odd as the response to the mayonnaise question, but it threw me for a second; I thought you could get a newspaper almost everywhere in suburban Dallas. The way it was phrased made it sound like today's paper was as rare as the first issue of Superman comics or something. Her explanation clarified things, though: it turns out that a lot of people come in looking for a paper, and the Super Target Starbucks don't sell any. Still, it was the weirdest question I was asked all day...

THE SPLAT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD?: As I left my last school today, the director suggested to me that I should leave pretty quickly so I wouldn't get caught up in the "flower war" they were having next period behind the school by our parking lot. I was thinking that was a pretty sissy name for a war (political correctness run amok?) until I realized he meant it was a flour war, as in a reenactment of the American Revolution using flour fired out of toy muskets (or maybe they just throw it at each other?). That didn't exactly sound like something I wanted to get all over Kevmobile 1.2, so I did in fact beat a hasty retreat. On my way out, I noticed that two of the characters were already there--just like in the famous painting, there were the snare drummer and...the trumpet player? Wait a minute--there wasn't a trumpet player in that picture! I guess they couldn't scare up anyone to play piccolo--or was it a fife? Good fife players aren't exactly a dime a dozen, ya know. At any rate, I hope they had fun being messy without me.

BLOW OUT THE CANDLES: Happy birthday to Chris C., Wyatt and Andrew D. (the latter two born in the exact same year).

Is Sonic Reading My Blog?

Amazing....I drove past the error-prone Sonic sign today and it was somewhat fixed. It now reads:

HUNGRY
CONEY & TOTS
$2.99

Still no question mark, but we can almost tell they're not selling hungry food anymore.

So I wonder what caused them to fix it...1) Customer told them; 2) The big bosses came by, recoiled in horror at the grammatical fiasco and caned the sign-changer, Singapore-style; or 3) They're reading my blog! *shudder*

If you are reading it, Sonic, two suggestions: Get that question mark up there to complete the job, and how 'bout I get a "coney and tots" on the house for pointing out the error of your ways?

:ETADPU UPDATE: The backwards entry from the other day got a lot of response, and only a few people got headaches from reading it. *grins impishly* I have another trick up my sleeve for a novelty entry, but I'll save it for a few weeks.

DID HELL JUST FREEZE OVER? Naah, Zack just updated his blog for the first time in two-and-a-half months. Welcome back, Zack (poetry, heh).

(MIDDLE SCHOOL) QUOTES OF THE WEEK (MORE GRAMMATICAL GROUSING):
"I've never heard that in the whole two years you've teached me."

"I wish I brang my glasses today."

--Actual quotes from middle-school students in lessons this week. They both attend the same school, which makes me think that the English teachers there are really "learning them to talk good." (Actually, I'm sure the teachers are doing a fine job, but I wonder what grades these kids are making in their classes...)

Stupid Sonic Signage, Part Deux

Seen today on the marquee of the same Sonic Drive-In that had a poorly-written message a few weeks ago:

HUNGRY CONEY
& TOTS
$2.99

So now they're selling food that's hungry itself? How does that work? And isn't that more than a little inhumane?

Assuming that the famous "coney island" hot dog doesn't possess the ability to be hungry, that leaves us with few other choices. The dictionary defines a coney as either a small, burrowing, harelike mammal or a black-spotted fish with reddish fins. I can't imagine either of those at Sonic, and as a former rabbit owner, I could no more eat rabbit than I could dog or cat (this despite the "Tasha burrito" joke, which I'll explain another time).

It's amazing what a well-placed question mark would have done to that message board...somebody enroll that sign dude in remedial English or something.

1.5 SECONDS OF FAME, continued: Another contribution of mine made it into Dave Barry's Blog over the weekend (and no, "Nerve in my Neck" is not a weird nickname or a medical conditon; everyone who's been sending stuff in for the past couple weeks has been using anagrams of their names).


PLAYING IN THE KEVMOBILE TODAY: The Tubes, Outside Inside. This CD is 20 years old now but still sounds pretty fresh, and you've gotta love a band with a lead singer named "Fee Waybill." You may have heard the hit "She's a Beauty" on the radio, but for my money, the best part of the CD is "Wild Women of Wongo" and "Tip of My Tongue" back-to-back, along with the remake of "The Monkey Time." The L.A. studio horns (Chuck Findley, Jerry Hey, etc.) really wail.

A Sign of the Apocalypse a Really Poor Speller?

Seen on a sign at a Sonic that I drove past today:

NEW MELTS
UMM...DELICIOUS

And I was really confused. Either this meant that the person had intended to say "MMM...DELICIOUS" (and how in the world do you misspell a word that's just one letter over and over again?) or else they couldn't make up their mind whether they liked the food or not ("So, what did you think of the melts?" "Umm...delicious?").

Needless to say, I ate somewhere else. Figure out whether or not you actually like the melts and get back to me, will ya?