ISlAM

Look, my friends, even this guy put some effort into correcting an obviously former lowercase L by squeezing a little uppercase action into ISlAM.  If he can do it, despite his Engrish, and in the wake of an attack on the US Embassy in Libya, there's no excuse why we can't, too.

SlOBBER

If you look close enough it's not so much a lowercase L as it is a slim uppercase L, but from far away the little L foot disappears, so we'll let this Chinglish pass.  Discovered by Michael A. on NY Times, we can all take comfort in the fact that SMART NOSHERY MAKES YOU SlOBBER.

Teenage Mutant Ninja TURTlES

Matt G. discovered this double-L SCROll key in the 1994 Season 8 episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titled "Enter Krakus". It looks like it might be a case of the squeeze, but Matt believes this may be a symptom of a larger Engrish problem, as the cartoons and lettering are all produced overseas. Here's another example from the 1993 Season 7 episode, a store sign for TElEVISIONS in "The Starchild":

Heroes in a HAlF-L!

ElEVATOR

Hillary found this ElEVATOR sign in Beijing. It is easy to dismiss a lowercase L error in the Eastern world as one that was lost in translation. But I blame the mistake on us lazy Westerners, who can't keep a simple 26-letter alphabet simple and consistent. As a result, these Beijing elevator goers get the shaft.

VEGETABlES

It's got a lot of glare, but click to zoom in and you'll see what caught Jeremy D's eye at this Chinese market in Springfield, Oregon. It's enough to make you want to forget to eat your VEGETABlES.

WATERFAlL FAIL

This rarely, if ever, happens: a lowercase L juxtaposed with an uppercase L in the same otherwise all uppercase word. Tristan found this terrific Thailand treat online at FuCK YeAH BangkOK, a blog with a name written with alternating upper and lowercase letters — ironically, like someone with dysgraphia might write it. This ERAWAN WATERFAlL, found in Erawan National Park in western Thailand, is named for Erawan, the three-headed white elephant of Hindu mythology. But even godliness could not save the sign writer from this epic FAIL.

In a WORlD ...

(Said with an imposing movie voiceover tone) "In a world ... where uppercase letters rule ... one letter stood out. It was ... the lowercase L".

Found overseas by contributor Wendy Wong, whose travels brought us a previous SAlTY find in WAlES, this Shanghai DVD store is officially busted, and it isn't for pirating movies. Movie Star may be "EVEN BETTER THAN MOVIE WORlD" in movie selection, but not in signage. Wendy writes:

I try not to pick on foreign examples, but I'm living in Shanghai, and I think this one's pretty good. Otherwise spelled correctly, and everything! Interesting to note is that there is no lower case in this lovely '90s font, so it actually is an uppercase I.

You may be interested to know that the pirated-DVD store formerly known as 'MOVIE WORID' is just across the road. It's now called 'Big Movie'.

Wendy has a point about the foreign language aspect of lowercase L sightings. This lowercase L, which actually seems to be an uppercase i, could be a case of Engrish, and may have something to do with the lack of an L sound in some southern dialects of China.

Slow REFlEXES

Brooklyn Heights is supposedly even more affluent than my own neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. so I am surprised to see such a flagrant example of misplaced lowercase L. Found by Tom and posted to the ilovebacon.com website of unusual photos, I don't think I'll be getting much PAIN RELIEF or MUSCLES RELAXATION from the enigmatic FOOT REFlEXOLOGY. This one is a mystery to me. It doesn't look like a space saver case, so maybe a sloppy author scribbled "reflexology" with a sole lowercase L, and the sign artist, not familiar with reflexology, interpreted the handwriting exactly as it was written. Nice find! The game is afoot.

OVERSEAS CAll

Lowercase L contributor and world traveler, Jessica J, made this OVERSEAS CAll at a travel agency in Vietnam. The sign writer is not unfamiliar with the uppercase L, as in SALES, and had plenty of space to use uppercase L's, since he was able to squeeze in the misspelled FOREINGE EXCHANGE, which has more letters. Thankfully there is more than one way to buy a ticket to get away from that sign.

DUMPING PlACE

Just in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Jessica J found this GARBAGE DUMPING PlACE on a train in China. This one is particularly interesting because the sign looks like it was printed using a computer type font, so the printer must have consciously chosen to use a lowercase L instead of keeping the caps lock on for the entire word. It's also worth noting that English was probably not the native written script language of the author, so the distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters might be an unfamiliar concept to him. Anyway, they certainly put this sign in the correct PlACE.

lOST IN TRANSlATION

Mike found these stunning examples of lowercase L "Engrish" translation in a Shanghai supermarket. You might say the person who constructed this sign wasn't using his noodle when he spelled out NOODlES, but at least he has the excuse of English as a second language.

I guess he was no literary genius, either, judging by this remarkably vague sign leading us to the lITERARY STYLK THING.