After my blethers last week about apostrophes in supermarket signs, I’ve been thinking about a noble profession that has all but died out in the years since desktop publishing extended grasping fingers around the world – sign writers.
When I was a younger man I don’t think I ever saw a wrongly-spelled or ill-punctuated sign. Nowadays, it is quite rare to see a perfectly produced sign.
I have a vivid memory of a day more than 50 years ago when I watched a sign writer at work. He was perched on a ladder, painting a sign above the door of a funeral parlour and using what I later learned was a maulstick (about two feet long, with a padded leather ball on one end) to steady his hand. I think this oversized drumstick was what drew my young attention. He was a skilled worker. The sign remained in place until BT started adding digits willy-nilly to phone numbers.
Talk of sign writers reminds me of that old question: “Give me a sentence that has the same word five times in a row yet is grammatically correct?” The answer is, of course, a pub landlord advising a sign writer that on the panel above his front door he wants: “More space between Pig and and and and and whistle.”
Young people today don’t realise the magnitude of the change computers made on working life. They don’t remember when an office wasn’t a zombie army in a silent room, all transfixed by flashing screens.
The digital revolution made a lot of things easier, of course. In times past we used maps instead of satnavs to find our way, and (o the horror) had to take a dictionary from a shelf to look up spellings. And sign writers had to be employed to announce things to the world.
Nowadays, any fool can type in a few words with barely a nod towards proper English usage and hit “print”. And many fools do.
But if it is so much easier today, why are there so many comically constructed signs? I’ve seen a sign that said “Sign’s made here”. I have heard dark rumours of a gravestone that insists: “Here lies Mary, the best of mother’s”.
What is most puzzling, though, is how employees of shops, cafes, and businesses can stand to work in a place that sports a sign declaring they sell pizza’s, cake’s, DVD’s, or aggregate’s. Do they really not know the sign is wrong? If they do know, why don’t they do something about it? They should complain to their boss that they feel foolish, tainted by association with such gobbledegookery?
I wouldn’t go into a shop that advertised it sold “pie’s”. If they’ve been slovenly enough to put an apostrophe in the word, what have they put in the pies?
Word of the week
Vitiate (verb)
To spoil or impair quality or efficiency. EG: “The poor workmanship of the shop sign was enough to vitiate the reputation of the shop itself.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
