We ARE a-twitter about Will. Leave him alone!!! (And a note to all Aussie young whippersnappers - read him!) It's from far back enough that the spelling (and grammar/ syntax) should be left as is. Sort of like (although for different reasons) Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters (sic).
Hey, I love him. I know, I said it was a different case, but it must concern those in the thread who are afraid of the park sign's damaging effect on children.
Fat chance of "damaging effects" on kids these days; the park sign that went up near me recently (post #2) can only have been done by fairly recent "school" leaver. Damn, I'm beginning(?) to sound like a crusty old fart. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Just imagine if spelling grammar mistakes were the highest priority confusions in the young, or old, for that matter. A skillful pedagogue, parent or teacher, can use mistakes. Text on bottles of pills, appliance use instructions, the Physician's Desk Reference, constitutions and so on should be immaculate. Funny little signs in parks, aaaaah......
I'm not demanding that park signs be proofread as rigorously as your other examples because a misunderstanding could put the reader at risk. I'm demanding it because park signs are created by government bureaucracies. Any government project, no matter how small, takes a ridiculously long time, involves an unbelievably large number of people, and costs a shameful amount of money. I don't see why some of those people couldn't use some of that time to give me an error-free sign for my tax money, instead of sitting around all day "administering" each other. How many pairs of eyes have seen that sign before it is finally installed in the park? Twenty? And none of them took their jobs seriously enough to read it carefully?
She made it and installed it. Much less bureaucracy then. And considering the Depression was gearing up, I think they had bigger things to worry about.
A 60 year old handpainted sign? It might have been the only draft, painted in place. After 60 years the sign, for me, takes on a value, even including the mistakes, that gets lost with correction. I am not making a rule that all signs should be left as is and would have a different reaction to a new sign, or one that is recent enough so that it does not actually feel like a cultural artifact in itself. I see no loss in a small sign with correction to the side The sign maker(s) and approver(s) are most likely dead and much as I dislike wasteful bureaucratic enterprises, I would like a flexible system that could in cases like this, leave things be. And I dislike the 'editors'' act. They were not creative enough to come up with a sign to the side of the one they defaced. I think it would be much braver and important to go after aesthetic offenses, however legal or correct their language use is.
My neighborhood in Dallas, (which is a pretty young city) was built in the early 1920's and now has been designated a "Historical District" which is funny to me. My friends in London, and other ancient cities, are probably laughing...they would consider those buildings to be "new". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
A friend is buying my wife a T-Shirt which reads: I am the grammarian of whom you were warned by your mother. I think it's great.
Why did it bother them that much? When I see mistakes I just mentally correct them and move on. I don't get why it bothers people so much that they feel the need to deface a sign.
Because it's a GOVERNMENT sign. The government can't be bothered to fix a glaring error in a sign that's going to be read by thousands or maybe millions of people, many of whom are foreign tourists who are going to go home and tell everybody in their country what they think of America. What does that tell us about the quality of the rest of their work? Can we trust the FDA, the cops, the army? Why is it that I have NEVER seen a collection of government signs with errors from England, Australia, or the other anglophone countries? Because there aren't enough government signs with errors to fill up one good e-mail spam? We expect it in stores, gas stations, churches, anywhere the work is done privately without a lot of oversight, and quite possibly by people who are well-meaning but not well-educated. We don't expect it from the bloody government. They have all those people sitting around doing next to nothing, couldn't they take turns proofreading each other's signs? Yes, I'm talking mostly about contemporary signs. I understand that the sign in the O.P. is very old and special, and if it wasn't corrected originally it borders on vandalism to mark it up now. If I saw it my reaction would be to giggle. But then I'd do the arithmetic and realize that it was erected in the late 1940s, when governments in America were already bloated with staff and overflowing with money. And then I'd be mad. No, I would probably not fix it. But I can understand why someone else did.
Can you imagine the outcry if the gvmt spent time and money on fixing grammatical errors on signs? I understand people seeing it and it bothering them. I wonder about someone that it bothers THIS much. Seriously! "haunted by the perversity"!!!
That's stupid. The only time I expect grammar to be perfect is well. Never I never expect grammar to be perfect. Because the English language is already ridiculously complicated enough. But that's because grammar mistakes don't bother me that much. Chances are I probably don't even notice unless its glaringly obvious. Except open quotations "those bother me a lot.
