“Signs” That Don’t Need “Quotes”
By Just Stupid on Mar 19, 2010 in Stupid Signs
There are a lot of things that people do to signs to make themselves look stupid. They misspell words on signage. They leave words off by mistake. They post signs upside down. They use phrases that are inappropriate for the setting of the sign. But arguably one of the dumbest things that people do when putting up signs is to add quotation marks for absolutely no reason at all.
There are two reasons to put quotations marks around text. The first, as we all should have learned in school, is to indicate that someone else has said something. You put quotes around their words because, well, you’re quoting them.
The other situation is when what you’re saying is not really what you mean and you want to make this overtly obvious. For example, if your sister asks where Mom and Dad are and there are younger kids around, you might say that they’re in the bedroom "talking". They are not really talking. Your quotes indicate that. This form of using quotes is, however, something normally done in speech and air quotes are used. You don’t use it often in writing.
These are the only two times that you use quotes. So why is it that there are so many signs out there with arbitrary quote marks around the most random words? If you don’t think that there are too many of these signs, take a look at the "blog" of unnecessary "quotes" which posts signage daily that highlights these errors.
Unfortunately, the blog itself seems to be lacking something. The pictures of the offending signs are terrific. However, the text that goes with them seems as unnecessary as the quotes are. The text goes overboard to point out what the opposite meaning of the quoted phrase might be. For example, if a sign were to read "all" quotes wanted, the text along with it would likely read, "I guess they only want some quotes and not all quotes". Just the pictures and none of the commentary would be just fine.
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- Washington, D.C. Traffic Sign
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Dennis the Mennis | Mar 21, 2010 | Reply
Come-on…
Well here we go! The federal law says that there two places you can not carry.
1- Courts & Federal Buildings.
2- Post offices.
Since federal law over-rides state and local laws, The sign here Illegal as well as wrong.
The 2nd amendment to the Constitution of the United States Garrentees the American people the right to keep and bear arms. No local YAHOO with a sign on his door can reverse that. Wouldn’t this local YAHOO be happy if a couple of his paytrons were armed when the rober/murderer showed up!
The Constant Complainer | Mar 23, 2010 | Reply
Dennis, you’re actually not correct. In many cases, Federal law does trump State law, but not in this area.
Many states have laws indicating conceal/carry regulations. For example, I live in Ohio and you really can’t carry anywhere, unless you work in the field of law enforcement and are on duty.