Calling the kettie black

This is an information card taken from my room at the Dan Panorama Hotel in Eilat, Israel. Notice the English translation requests:

You are kindly requested not to use electrical appliances such as irons, ketties, etc. in your room.

So what is a ketty, or ketties? Well, in the Hebrew version above, it corresponds with the word קומקום

which translates to KETTLES. So I'm guessing when someone was translating the Hebrew into English, they used a lowercase L when writing KETTlES, and this was reasonably mistaken for an uppercase i by the non-English speaking printer. By the way, this is not the first time someone has made the grave error of substituting a handwritten lowercase L for a printed uppercase i.

I'll DEBATE

Christian C. found this report for the 2008 presidential debate on the front page of the Huffington Post today. It's not confusing to read, but certainly an interesting editorial choice to only make the L's lowercase in "I'll", while all the other letters in the headline, including the typically lowercase first "c" in McCain, are uppercase. They may have been trying to save some space, considering there is no space between the ellipsis and BRING UP.

The ENVElOPES, please

I snapped this photo in the storage closet of one of my clients. Whoever wrote this was not unfamiliar with LARGE L's, but oddly chose not to stuff one into ENVElOPES.

MlS-leading

My brother-in-law Todd got in on the lowercase L action when he found this MlS-leading Multiple Listing Service website. Webmaster Alex Zapata got it right in the first MLS heading, and all the other MLS mentions throughout. But the L in the final "Find your desired property through the MlS" is just bad placement, and we all know the three most important things in real estate, right? lOCATION, lOCATION, and lOCATION.

ART FOlDER

The Joshmeister found this lowercase L in Southern California. The celestial misalignment of stars that formed this art constellation seems to be the cause of the improperly used lowercase L on the ART FOlDER.

BlOODS

"lIl Wayne" spotted this graffiti on a public television news broadcast, WYIN in northwest Indiana, and muses that the BlOODS gang doesn't seem nearly as menacing when written this way. I'm sure the Crips will have a field day with this one.

lowercase AlEX

Local New Yorker Jeff discovered this concrete evidence of lowercase L corruption here in the city:

I have passed this many times on my way to and from work and finally stopped to take a picture. I found it on Vesey street, down by the WTC site. Apparently AlEX + SHARON wanted to profess their love to the world in a permanent way. I apologize for the blurriness.

Even if Alex discovered his mistake just an hour later it would have been too late to correct. His carelessness is forever on display, permanently set in stone. This may just be the saddest thing that has ever happened in the site of the former World Trade Center.

Back to SCHOOl

Possibly my favorite find to date, this SCHOOl X-ING on-road signage can be seen painted on Underhill Ave. by Bergen Street in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. I think this is probably the result of a parked car blocking the path of the street painter, and the painter just never got around to returning to the scene of the crime to finish the job, figuring a lowercase L was better than no L. But confusion could arise if one were to mistake the first uppercase i in X-ING as another lowercase L ... so if it's X-LNG, does it then read as EXCELLING SCHOOL? ...

BOOM! You just hit a kid crossing the street because you were confused by the lowercase L.

Going POSTAl

Two lowercase L readers, David and Daniel, each submitted this same find on PostSecret. I think this is a classic case of letter crunching, because the postcard author clearly knew his uppercase L's, but must have panicked when he got near the edge with THEMSElF. Or maybe because "themself" isn't actually a word in modern English.

WElCOME TO HARlEM

Harlem was once considered a dangerous neighborhood because of high crime rates and poverty. But lowercase L reader PES points out that, while times are changing, despite a renaissance of art and culture, Harlem is still a place to be feared, just for much different reasons. WElCOME TO HARlEM.