A Sign?

A couple of weekends ago I spotted a sign back in Essex with a bemusing ambiguity, created by the lack of punctuation. A bit of context: the sign in question was in a park, on a road near a children’s play area. The sign read over two lines like so:

Children Playing

Drive Slowly

I may just be a hopeless grammarian/romantic, but this made me think (and chuckle). Everyone I was with just did not get what I was thinking. The thought that the hilarious – and worrying – idea of children who are playing drive cars slowly did not cross the sign-writers minds worried me ever so slightly. Is this a sign grammar, or punctuation, is receding in our process of writing? To see whether this stretched further, I decided to have a Google. I should not have had a Google…

Grammar Signs

I should quickly point out the above image is a sign error I found whilst searching, and not a (blindly obvious) subliminal message to people of the world. The guy above could be attempting irony; he also could be advertising himself, and his name is actually Brian. I’d like to think the latter is more likely.

Grammar Sines

This image was in one of Tim’s lectures (for those that are not at Brighton University, he is one of our lecturers/entertainers). It wasn’t really, but would anyone walk out of a lecture if this were on the board when you went in? I know people who would, but I’d like to think I’d stick around to see if a) they correct it or b) I eventually correct it.

Gramma Sinse

Apart from sounding like a coalition between two political parties, this could be the final nail in the coffin for those highly regarded people who produce signs or road markings, like in the above.

To me, this all makes my face more lugubrious-looking than usual. I am not particularly fond of sticking to every strict grammar rule out there, I’d say I have a more modern and adaptive approach than that. But (see that? A ‘modern’ start to a sentence), orthographically speaking, I am a stickler for errors and would like to see others be so too. I wouldn’t go as far as starting a petition to sign-writers, but would go as far as saying hopefully someone shares this post and is seen by someone who does that.

It would be quite a lovely idea to have a word for sign-writers, also.

So, that’s it for my first post on here – expect the rest to dwindle in tackling important, world-reaching issues like this. I feel like a festival curator when I say this, but there will be a post from another student sometime soon. I’m courting for others to do so too, so feel free to speak to me if you have an idea!

All the above photos belong to Bit Rebels.