The other day I picked my wife up at the Beverly commuter rail station. The train actually arrived on time. Even more amazing was a notice on the electronic billboard: “Riders outbound will be bussed (sic) from Gloucester to Rockport.”
My word, I thought, their lips will surely be puffy and sore by the end of that bus ride.
Everywhere I look, there are spelling and grammatical errors. For the longest time they made me (sic) to my stomach. As Elvis Costello sang, “I used to be disgusted/And now I try to be amused.”
There’s an excellent restaurant my wife and I frequent on Route 1 in Danvers that has a lively, fun lounge. From the menu: “CEASAR (sic) SALAD $9.50: Crisp romaine leaves tossed with croutons, dressing and black olives sprinkled with parmesan cheese.” Would you like an Orange Juluis (sic), with that? If you go to the Hardcover and find an ink-stained menu with squiggly proofreading marks transposing letters, that’s copy editor Bill’s handiwork.
Another restaurant, on Route 114 in Middleton, advertised a “Half Roasted Chicken” special. I wasn’t sure if it was half a chicken or if the chicken was half-roasted. Don’t know about you, but nothing turns me off quicker than eating raw chicken.
Restaurants are notorious for typos and spelling errors. Remember the Klemm’s Restuarant (sic) sign in downtown Lynn? My buddy stole a menu from a Florida restaurant that sold “the World-Famous Anus (sic) Burger.” They should have been more bullish about proofreading.
The grocery store down the street advertised “LOL butter $1.99 lb.” Laugh Out Loud butter? What the heck is that? Of course, it’s Land O Lakes, but in this smiley-emoji world of text abbreviations I automatically thought of the other. And don’t get me started on the autocorrect feature on our phones; it’s taken typos to a whole new level. Some of the word substitutes are vulgar and side-splittingly funny — unlike this article.
A poster in a Boston convenience store near my former office had one rule: “No Smoking Aloud” (sic). It took a lot of willpower for me to keep my mouth shut. A few doors away was a small family restaurant whose special one day was “Chicken McLugnuts.” You could use them on your car wheels in an emergency, I guess.
Sometimes lights burn out on a business’ sign, with hilarious results. Who can forget the former Eaton the Druggist store in downtown Salem that for several weeks suggested we all “Eat Drugs.” And then there was the former Essex Bank in Swampscott’s Vinnin Square. If you stood in just the right spot on Salem Street, a sign beckoned that advertised “sex Bank” and elicited giggles in immature fools such as I.
I won’t even mention the hysterics caused when hooligans tampered with the sign at the former Penni’s market in Marblehead.
The gas station where I fill up the tank of my old Corolla has a sign on the pump: Cash customer’s pay first. Apostrophes are always problematic. Which is correct: “The Smith’s house” or “The Smiths’ house”? Word experts say it’s “The Smith’s House,” but that just looks wrong to me.
In China, road signs directed my buddy to see the “Terra-Cotta Worriers (sic).”
Sometimes, businesses have unfortunate names. Gross Floor Covering in Swampscott always made me LOL. Sort of like naming an Italian restaurant Salmonella’s.
When I was a kid, a story in the old Peabody Times touted an expedition that was to honor the 1947 Kon-Tiki journey by raft. Except the letters in raft were swapped around to spell f-a-r-t. Uproarious! Can you say “we all felt smart” three times fast. Totally juvenile!
In Florida, signs are everywhere for Peoples Gas. “How do you heat your house, Bill?” “Oh, a bunch of Peoples Gas employees, after a lunch of beans, broccoli and cabbage, line up inside my home and let loose.”
The news crawls on local TV stations frequently are filled with embarrassing misspellings that make me cringe. Of course, this newspaper has been known to make a whopper or two. Who knows, there might even be a typo in this column. I hope knot.
Would you like the final word? Please share some of your favorite misspellings with Item readers and Features editor Bill Brotherton. He can be reached at [email protected].