Tag: signs

I tend to notice mistakes on signs. Sometimes the mistakes make me feel frustrated, but usually they fall somewhere on the spectrum between interesting and hilarious.

“Dr Bags is the trusted aesthetics clinic for your designer bags.”

I didn’t know designer bags needed an aesthetics clinic, but that’s probably just because I don’t own one.

Unless the upcycled seat-belt kind counts. (Probably not.)

Anyway, I’m posting this photo because I was surprised to see the word “ain’t” used in a Singapore ad. It struck me as especially strange because the ad is for a luxury service. Not, you know, grits or cornbread muffins or something similarly folksy and homey.

The ad says:

It’s not luxury if it ain’t clean.

After I thought about it, I realized there’s a third level of weirdness, which is that the first half of sentence uses “it’s” and the second half of the sentence uses “ain’t”. I guess I would have expected two uses of “it’s” or two uses of “ain’t”, not one of each.

But maybe the contrast between the two contractions explains the whole thing.

The more standard word “it’s” goes with the idea of “luxury” and the more casual word “ain’t” goes with the idea of “not clean”.

Or I’m overthinking it.

…In Fact, It’s Our Specialty!

When I was a teacher, some of my students would bring to class bags displaying the name, logo, and endlessly amusing tagline of Tien Hsia Language School.

So finally I took a photo of the exterior wall of one of the Tien Hsia centers.

I think “Tien Hsia”, or 天下 (pinyin tiānxià), means “the world”.

No durians on trains! (Apparently they still have to remind people.)

Much has changed in Singapore since my husband and I arrived in 2008. But one thing hasn’t: the fines for these four public transit–related transgressions.

  • No eating or drinking (Fine: S$500)
  • No smoking (Fine: S$1000)
  • No flammable goods (Fine: S$5000)
  • No durians (?!?!)

We can only imagine the punishment for bringing a durian on this Downtown Line train…

And by the way, how exactly did it come to be that a hamburger is the universal sign for “food” on “do not eat” signs the world over? That picture is a hamburger, right? And it’s everywhere, isn’t it? Why?

No Admin Fee and GST

This is a sticker on the inside of the window in a taxi. It says:

NO ADMIN FEE & GST
when you pay with Dash!

Even assuming you like the ampersand in this font (I don’t), the conjunction needed here is ‘or’.

(No admin fee) and (no GST) => No (admin fee or GST)

The sign that says “no food and drinks” is also wrong for the same reason.

However, “Don’t leave your handphone & wallet behind”, assuming we find ‘handphone’ acceptable, sounds fine, since ‘handphone’ and ‘wallet’ can easily be considered a pair of items that would be forgotten together.

dont-leave-your
“Record shows 50% of the reported lost cases in taxi are Handphones and Wallets” on the other hand, has several problems…

I would rewrite that as follows.

Records show that 50% of the items reported lost in taxis are mobile phones and wallets.

On the other hand, I like the ampersand on this half of the sign much better. Even if it is crowding the descender on that letter ‘y’.

Wear and use your personal protective equipments

Pluralized uncountable nouns are a pet peeve of mine. The one that’s most frequently publicly wrong is ‘equipments’ because it’s posted at every construction site, and there are a lot of construction sites.

equipments
apparels
cutleries
furnitures
cuisines (meaning ‘dishes’)
slangs, jargons

I’ve also noticed uncountable nouns being used in the singular, which is just as wrong.

a bread (meaning ‘a bun or roll’)
a paper (meaning ‘a piece of paper’)

There are many words that are countable about half the time and uncountable about half the time, which I’m sure doesn’t tend to help people to understand the underlying distinction.

effort / efforts
content / contents
experience / experiences
praise / praises
detail / details
instruction / instructions
input / inputs
dialogue / dialogues

Recently I saw an email from a marketing agency in which the text of the ads was referred to as ‘ad copies’ instead of ‘ad copy’. Ack, no.

Fighting such errors may be impossible in the long run, because in principle there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to say ‘equipments’, and obviously people here already feel perfectly free to do so. Until uncountable nouns die off completely, though, you’re better off knowing how to use them correctly.

Main Wait

National Heart Centre Singapore logo

  • Nice new 12-story building? Check.
  • Nifty quasi-anatomical logo? Check.
  • Building signs checked by English expert? Nope.

The signs in this waiting area at the National Heart Centre Singapore say “Main Wait” when they should say something like “Main Waiting Area”.

To be fair, “wait” can be a noun as well as a verb (but I don’t think it means what you think it means). Also, the signs are totally intelligible, so… close enough, I guess!

No, actually the real problem is that there’s ample waiting space in some parts of the building and not enough in others. My guess is, it’s easy to design a building, but hard to design a building that is used by people. Which is every building, actually.

National University of Stairs

clementi-woods-steps
at Clementi Woods Park

“Walk 10,000 steps a day! Here are 70 steps to get you started! Have some scorching Singapore sunshine and a healthy dose of humidity, too! Oh, you’re carrying groceries? Fantastic! You can build arm and leg muscles at the same time!”

I live at Kent Vale at NUS. Since the word ‘vale’ means ‘valley’, and ‘NUS’ obviously stands for National University of Stairs, sometimes life seems like an uphill battle.