HAllMARK of Ex-L-ence

What is a HAllMARK of excellence?  It certainly isn't the lettering on this door.  Vincent explains his astonishing discovery:

My son and I were taking our recycling materials to the collection center behind a local strip mall in Canal Winchester, OH. I noticed this back door to the HAIIMARK store. I asked my son to handle unloading the recyclables, because I had to snap a picture of this horror. A man's gotta have his priorities.

 More like a hall MAR if you ask me.

VHS for SAlE

Oh, Rimpy, how do you find so many improperly used lowercase L's?  Rimpy explains for this classic SAlE sample:

There was supposed to be an A at the beginning of the first line, but it must have fallen off. The other side of the sign said basically the same thing, plus the name of the business (ALL THE BEST VIDEO), with all uppercase Ls in their proper form. I guess this depleted their store of uppercase Ls, and they had to resort to the old uppercase I for L trick for the other side. 

TAlK-N-TEXT

Rimpy Rimpington strikes again, but this time not from a Home Depot.  The person who arranged the individual letter pieces in this window display may have tried to TAlK-N-TEXT at the same time, apparently to no avail.  He also came dangerously close to a double lowercase L situation with the handwritten UNLIMITED CALLING on the top left portion of the sign, but managed to squeeze in a bit of the lower legs on the L's.

HECKlE and JECKlE

Sean of the Eff-Stop Local photo blog was taken aback when he noticed this HECKlE & JECKlE'S Chicken Shack sign while tooling around Tacoma, Washington.  You may recall Heckle and Jeckle, the mischievous pair of magpies for whom our Chicken Shack owner named his fine restaurant.  Perhaps it was in the spirit of these crazy cartoon birds' reckless abandon that the author of the sign chose to write in all capital letters, except, of course, for the lowercase L's.  Or maybe it's just as I've always suspected — the world is coming to an end.

POOL TABlE SAlE

Yesterday's submission by Randy C. outs Gary Pool as a repeat offender.  Today it's a POOL TABlE SAlE.  Randy explains:

I spotted this one on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Amherst, NY.  In the summer this business sells swimming pools and during the winter they turn to indoor entertainment items such as pool tables.

Seems that Gary is short on uppercase L's for his readerboard.

Sunday SPECIAls

Trying to get back into the swing of posting more regularly, I was encouraged by Randy C of Cheektowaga, NY, to post more frequently.  He tells his tale:

I spotted this one on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Amherst, NY, soon after the Buffalo Home and Garden Show.  Of secondary interest is the lower case "o" in the word "show."

I pass this business three times a week and have gotten so I always check out their sign.  Is this just a clever way to get people to notice their business?

Just for fun, I've included a second photo to place the sign in context.

Not the SPECIAl on this blog.  Also reminds me of a POOl or two.

Swine FlU

SWINE FlU GONE TOO FAR, indeed!  Dylan C. from Cairo, NY explained that this was a 12th grader's class assignment.  Looks like swine flu is beginning to take a toll on lowercase L judgment ... and education.

This is not the first case of FlU we've caught here.

CHIlE

Lowercase L errors are usually ephemeral, written on cardboard, scribbled on scrap paper, or arranged with letter tiles on a roadside readerboard.  But once in a great while, a lowercase L makes a mark of permanence in the world, and it simply cannot be ignored.

Such is the case with the flawed 50-peso coins minted in Chile in 2008.  Surprisingly, no one noticed the misspelled CHIlE until just a few weeks ago.  Are people so used to writing lowercase L's among all uppercase letters that everyone thought this was passable?

This could be a result of mistaking the uppercase i stamp for an L stamp, or the error could have followed a poorly handwritten note that instructed the Chilean minter to cast the letters CHIlE in metal.  Or perhaps there was a conspiracy to inject the market for erroneous coins with fresh material.

Either way, this may be bigger than the Manhattan Project incident.

Thanks to Adrian Bailey for passing along this news!

ClAM SAUCE

Lisa B. found this LOBSTER ClAM SAUCE at Moby Dick Restaurant on the wharf in Santa Barbara. Funny that the author almost lost it with the weak uppercase L in SALMON, fully recovered with LOBSTER, and then totally fell apart with the ClAM.

This time it's PERSONAl

It's easy to ignore the lowercase L problem when it doesn't impact our lives in any way other than annoyance or mild confusion. But when someone attacks the family name, it hits too close to home for comfort. That's how Morgan Holzer felt when he read this sign being held by the car service driver at the airport. It reads like a McKenzie Brothers Canadian insult ... Take off, you HOlZER & MORGAN!