Friday, March 17, 2006

SAlEM PlANT Hunt

Jeff G. returns with another fine submission, and explains that both of his PlANTS were found in Salem, Oregon. In addition to the obvious L misprint, this sign has some other fascinating case choices, like the magestic uppercase T's that loom over all the other letters; and the rest of the lowercase L's, all of which happen to be the second to last letter in their words—SAle, BOWl's (oh, snap! I smell an Apostrophe Catastrophe cross-post!), and MARAGOld. Notice these three words are composed entirely of uppercase letters, except for the L and adjacent last letter. What happened here? Is there something about the L that makes people forget they were writing in the uppercase? And when they hit the L, it's all downcase from there?

Either way, we finally have proof that the lowercase L phenomenon reaches far beyond the east coast. Just how far does it reach? Check in next week for the answer.

3 comments:

pdberger said...

"[...]like the magestic uppercase T's that loom over all the other letters; and the rest of the lowercase L's"

Isn't this an apostrophe catastrophe of its own?

William Levin said...

No, pdberger, there is no apostrophe catastrophe in T's. According to Dictionary.com Word FAQs:

The apostrophe is used for plurals of letter abbreviations with periods and single letters, e.g., p's and q's; two A's and four B's.

pdberger said...

I stand corrected, Mr Levin.