Bad Grammar in Public Places

Red Valentine's Day cushions remaindered to Goodwill, embroidered all in white block letters

YOUR MINE

On my MSN Messenger dialog box, the following ad appeared:



It is illegal to visit any country with a criminal record.



Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of any entire countries with a criminal record. And how am I supposed to know for sure before I visit a country whether it has a criminal record? I don’t want to break the law.



Oh dear, I might never travel again (not that I have the money to travel anyway…).

I notice it in newspapers all the time, and it drives me insane. There's one local reporter who consistently mixes up his There, Their, and They'res, and his editor apparently doesn't know the difference either.

My editor and I have a weekly chuckle over it.

I almost ate in the PUBIC area of a restaurant's patio area, but then thought better of it.

My ex used to publish a tiny local paper, but he's never mastered the difference between "were" and "where". Drove me crazy...still does. I have issues reading emails when he sends them to me.

I mentioned this somewhere else, but there's a health spa near where I live named "Too Your Health Spa."

Tonight I was driving past a liquor store on a main street in my town and saw a huge sign in the front window that read "RUM'S"-- I almost hit the car in front of me.

There used to be a store on Queens Blvd. with a large hand painted sign in the window reading "Italian Lacker Furniture."

It was around the corner from the magazine and lotto shop with "Congratulation to our three lottery winner" in the window.

Huge letters outside my favorite lunch place . . . Buffet Served Daylie.


Hmm.

The local paper always reports that things were "busted" i.e. The water faucet downtown was busted off. Local police are investigating.

Ahhh...makes me want to strangle someone...can't they find a better word for this? Is "broken" really that hard to spell?

"Ice tea .99 cents"

Also, "Monitored by close circuit TV"

"Please do not stand or lay here" -- lay? They mean "getting laid," don't they?

'Modern en-suite bedrooms' - That mean they provide huge bathrooms with an attached closet containing a bed?

Cat Scratch said:

Ah, yes. The restaurant I used to work in offered both ice tea and whip cream.

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Don't forget the scramble eggs. I saw that typo this past weekend in a local diner.

Cheryll

It wasn't in print, nor was it grammar, but it was pronunciation, which I suppose can be just as dangerous.

I'll never forget it:
Several months ago I was watching television and a commercial came up, loudly proclaiming great deals on suites. Bedroom suites, professional suites, any relazing and extravagant suite you could think of. The announcer kept saying it over and over, excitedly, just as they usually do.

However, he pronounced suite as "suit" when it should be like "sweet".

I don't know, that's all I got but it cracked me up. How did that get past so many people only for a 16-year-old kid watching tv to notice it?

Oh yeah, and "All gift raping paper for .79 cents" and "Good writtens" are also pretty funny to find.

Is it?

Home in NZ a few days ago I heard the news on TV3. Two things caught my ears:

The company dealt to the problem...

The rain impacted the fruit harvest in...

This being NZ I could ring the newsroom and complain. I did. The response was that TV3 is part owned by an American company and the two examples I complain about were American usage. Apart from my indignation at having bad American English foisted upon us when we have our own wondrously weird Kiwi English to use instead I did wonder.

I deal cards to people and deal with problems.
As I see it the heavy rain would have an impact upon the fruit harvest.

Are the two examples I heard good grammatical American English or just more mangling?

pdr said:

The response was that TV3 is part owned by an American company and the two examples I complain about were American usage.

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Oh, right, blame the Americans.

As one of "them," I can tell you that I've never seen "dealt" used that way. Unfortunately, I've seen "impact" as a verb way too many times. It's bureaucratic (government, business) jargon of recent origin.

I can overlook almost any bad grammar, but the one thing I can't forgive is when a needlessly big word is used inappropriately, or mispronounced. I mean, simple is best, most of the time.