Treo vs. BlACKBERRY

Fellow blogger and Brooklyn buddy Berger Boy finally made the grade with this lowercase L. Paul writes:

I hope you don't mind, but I spotted a lowercase L today at the farmer's market and blogged it via my Treo to see if it would work:

http://pdberger.com/biack-berries/

It did. I know this probably precludes an appearance on the Lowercase L blog (my dream for a long time) but if you want to use it, feel free...

Not a bad example, Paul, though I must point out that the lowercase L is taller than the rest of the letters, except for the B, which makes it less confusing than if all the letters were the same size.

Funnily enough, the day after Paul sent me his find, for which he had scoured the neighborhood for months, I found this SAlE literally around the corner from his home:


Now that's a lowercase L!

Now AVAlABLE

KevPod from Arcata, California submits this disturbing newspaper ad clipping and wonders:

What rational explanation could there be for having a lowercase and uppercase L in the same word?

It couldn't have been a space issue - there's room for the capital L in the middle. Was the person in a hurry? Or just CIUELESS?

Yes, it looks like the copy editor was in a hurry. But he probably didn't forget to capitalize this first L in AVAlABLE. Rather, it looks like he left the entire L out of AVAILABLE. A visually stunning example, nonetheless!

SHAlOM SHAWN

A big SHAlOM to lowercase L reader and Mets fan, EstoEric, who sent in this perfect example of lowercase L misuse, in transliterated Hebrew! EstoEric wrote:

From a recent Shea Stadium game; for Jewish player Shawn Green. Green hit a home run to win the game!

Judging from the size of the paper this fellow's carefully cut out letters are glued to, and the very tight kerning between the A and W in SHAWN, I'd say there was a slight miscalculation of how much space he had to work with.

I wonder if this L abomination was enough to turn EstoEric to the Yankees?

FREEDElEVRY

This is one of the most amusing examples lowercase L signage submitted I've seen in a while!  Found in front of a chinese restaurant in the ghetto of Syracuse, New York, by Eric K, it looks like the author misjudged both horizontal and vertical writing space. As he got closer to the bottom of the sign, looks like he panicked with "UNER", switch to a smaller size text with OWNERSHIP, and finally crammed FREE and DElEVRY together using every space-saving technique he could think of.

Yet another creative spelling of DELIVERY.

Yard SAlE

It must be a South Jersey thing. Visiting my family this past weekend in my hometown of Vineland, New Jersey, we went to the Red, White & Blueberry Festival in Hammonton, NJ, "Blueberry Capital of the World", on this warm first of July Sunday. Keeping my eyes peeled for a rogue BlUEBERRY sign, I shouldn't have been surprised to find this YARD SAlE sign before we even reached the festival grounds. It took me back to my youth, when I started noticing these lowercase SAlE L's in my rural surroundings. It also reminded me of why I left South New Jersey, fleeing up north to New York, where I thought I'd never come across another lowercase L again.

Interestingly, there were plenty of these green YARD SAlE signs leading up to the Blueberry Festival, some written as SAlE, others as SALE. Must have been two authors constructing the signs. Perhaps brothers ... one good, the other wicked.

FREE BEAGlE

Submitted by Ryan And Nancy in South Bend, Indiana:

I have been driving by the attached sign on Portage Road in South Bend Indiana for a couple weeks. Before this there was a perpetual garage sale until a major rain storm, then everything was free...

Then this sad sign... no phone number, it is on the lot line between two houses.

As we drive past once again I point out the odd sign to my wife Nancy who took the picture...

'FREE BEASIE'?
'no that is a G.'
'Oh FREE BEAGIE. What is a beagie?'
'I think that is FREE BEAGlE, you know snoopy dog.'
'LOWER CASE L!!!!'
'What?"
"take a picture"
"Why?"
"take a picture"
click

Of course doing a google on beagie has many dogs with that name... so is this a dog looking for a new owner or is there a dog in jail somewhere?

This is the worst case of misspelling BEAGLE since Charlie Brown screwed it up in that spelling bee.

SWAllOWED

"Skittles" submits this "eerie" lakeside epitaph and explains,

This was taken by the Michigan Lake where signs of "Danger: Shallow Water" and "No Swimming" were all around.

I wonder if Nathan David Weiss would find comfort in the fact that double lowercase L's written within otherwise entirely uppercase words is a fairly common occurrence, and is not nearly as confusing as a single lowercase L.

I also like the lowercase T's that look like plus signs ... BU+ NO+

Reduced PlANTS

Kerrie in Lubbock, Texas submits this fine flora faux pas, the second wilted PlANT in a week! Kerrie writes:

Attached is a camera phone pic I took at my local Wal-Mart Supercenter (Lubbock, TX). Ironically, I took it on Friday, June 8, which looks like the same day you posted the sign on the 'Not for SAle' plant. Must have been a red letter lowercase 'l' day for plants - ha. Hope you enjoy it.

Reduced PlANT, indeed! With the L reduced to the lower case, looking so much like "piants", I was expecting 3.14 ants to be crawling around in the parking lot.

PlANT

As I waited in the checkout lane at the Key Food grocery store on 7th Ave. here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I was disappointed by the concoction of upper and lowercase letters as written on the potted plant, which read "Not ForSAle". Not because I wanted to buy the plant, but because it was just another reminder that lowercase L freaks are slowly taking over the world. Admittedly, this example strays from the rules for a proper lowercase L event, because the "e" following the lowercase L in SAle is also lower case. But since all the upper and lowercase letters were written as the same size, and the lowercase L follows two uppercase letters, the sign is mildly confusing.

The plant that was "Not For SAle" ... priceless.

BlOG of Note

While still away on business in lONDON, I am pleased to have learned that lowercase L has been named the Blogs of Note blog for Monday, June 04, 2007! Blogs of Note, which is an official Blogger product, posts a daily list of "Interesting and noteworthy Blogger-powered blogs, compiled by the Blogger Team."

THANK YOU, BlOGGER!