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A particularly amusing spelling mistake…

2 minute read

December 31, 2010, 6:38 PM

Anytime someone makes a spelling and punctuation error in public, particularly on materials printed professionally, it’s funny. For instance, on the South Mountain rest areas on both sides of I-70 in Maryland, a sign indicates where “RV’s” should go. It should read “RVs”, since it is neither possessive nor a contraction for “RV is”. In English, we don’t add apostrophes when pluralizing. One can correctly write, “The apostrophe’s going to be placed here,” or “The apostrophe’s tail is beautiful,” but one cannot correctly write, “I am putting six apostrophe’s in the sentence.” That would be correctly written as “I am putting six apostrophes in the sentence.” If you want to really get on my nerves, just be sloppy with your apostrophes. It drives me crazy.

But this one is actually kind of funny, spotted at the 7-Eleven on Frederick Road (MD 355) in Rockville near Shady Grove station. Take a look:

Do you see the error?

Did you see it? Here’s a detail on the sign:

Detail of the sign, with the spelling error circled

Yes, towing is “strickly” enforced. Not “strictly”, but “strickly”, whatever that means. I wonder if that’s related to “prickly”. I doubt it, though towing company representatives, in my experience, certainly do have prickly personalities when dealing with their victims.

Still, I wonder how that pretty big spelling error made it through the process to getting printed and hung up. It makes all parties involved with it look sloppy, and like they don’t know what they’re doing. Would you want to deal with a company that can’t even get a simple thing as a sign right, after all?

Web site: Funny Typos. For the record, the ones that are professionally printed, intended to be permanent, and by what would appear to be native speakers are the ones I find most amusing.

Song: A Christmas Trololo

Quote: And with about four and a half hours until the ball drops, this will likely be the last Journal entry I do for 2010. Happy new year, everyone! See you in 2011!

Categories: Amusing