When I am Copyeditor General (pt.2)

When the federal government introduces the grammatical equivalent of the Surgeon General, and I am the inaugural holder of that position, there will be a rule that signage must have universal meaning.

Case in point, the warning in the parking lot at Stone Zoo:



"What's that?" I asked The Boy.

"Dunno," he said. "Maybe it means no tailgating."

I had to search around online before I discovered it meant "no sitting in the parking lot with the engine running."

In other words, no idling.

Why couldn't they just say that? It's a much more common phrase. A Google search shows 93,000 results for "no idling," but only 30 for "no live parking." They were almost all in Massachusetts, so it's obviously a regionalism (and therefore the logical wording to post at a location that may attract out-of-state visitors).

Sigh.

On the other hand, I did get this fabulous shot of the jaguar:



Hey, I have one of those at home:

When I am Copyeditor General (pt.1)

How have I written for so long without exploding into a rant about language--specifically, the inability of other people to use it properly?

Well, that changes right now, mister.

I've always found a perverse thrill in discovering typos, grammatical lapses, ambiguous phrasing. The Boy will tell you how many times my perusal of a dinner menu sounds like this:

"Mmm, foie gras ... ohh, boeuf en daube ... ooh! Typo!"

(At such moments, The Boy rolls his eyes and sighs. If he's lucky, I don't get out my purple pen and mark up the offending text.)

I've been (triumphantly) collecting examples for a while, including this one, found in Miami:



Why the quotes? Is it irony? Are they hinting that the job doesn't involve "sales" at all, but merely hanging around and occasionally straightening the t-shirts?

What riled me up today, though, was the oversized postcard waiting in my mailbox:



Oh, how nice! My invited what?

Should I be more disturbed than usual because the invite is from the mayor of Medford, promoting his re-election announcement? Is he (or rather his wife, who allegedly wrote the copy) making some subtle indictment of the city's school system?

How many people read this before it went to the printer? And did none of them know the difference between "your" (meaning "belonging to you") and "you're" (meaning "you are")?

And I can't pass up the observation that the mayor cordially invites "you and your family to an old fashioned family barbecue." Wait--I can bring my family to the family barbecue? Really?

So your saying their invited too?