Go ahead, try to tell me this 14th Street bakery sign in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan doesn't read "Littie Pie Company". You can't, because you see it that way, too. That lE combo in LITTlE is the same as the IE in PIE!
Coming back from a party in Astoria, Queens in the wee hours of the morn with a broken arm and a sore foot, I passed by this gem just one block from home. It was already 4:30AM and I didn't have my camera on me. Not wanting to risk the DElIVERARY person getting there in the morning before I could return, I hobbled to my 4th floor apartment and returned to the scene of the crime to get the shot.
Speaking of substituting uppercase i's for L's in signage, here's an example of some pranksters who thought it would be funny to switch around the letters on a church sign, despite the lack of uppercase L's required to spell their pious message, "GOD BlESS LE TOPlESS". Personally, I believe, as I'm sure most readers of this site will agree, that the confusion caused by the two uppercase i's masquerading as L's makes this prank fall flat. Sorry, pranksters, looks like the joke's on you.
Submitted by Spinning Girl:While not a hand-written sign, I just had to send you this! 8th grade students at my school had to do posters on an assigned state. Why would they make every latter capital, except for the L?!?!? Although I know that these cutout letter kits come with two L's in them, and maybe they already used them up on a poster about Illinois.
Nothing SPECIAI about breakfast in Park Slope, Brooklyn, except when it's at the Grand Canyon, and it's served with a side of improperly used lowercase L's. This is another perfect example, in which the only lowercase letter is the L, and it is the same height as all the other letters in the word, including an uppercase i. You can see that the author clearly knows how to use an uppercase L, as in the LUNCH SPECIAL, but he ends up scribbling some sort of hybrid upper-lowercase L for the DINNER SPECIAl.
I caught this softcore lowercase L in a hidden camera clip from PlAYBOY TV, hosted on Break.com. While the y's are also lowercase, the lowercase L still looks slightly off between the other uppercase letters, and for a second I did think it was an uppercase i. The video clip is pretty funny, too, so click here to watch it. (Warning, brief lowercase L, not safe for work.)
Fellow blogger mdx found this sign on Portland blog Potato Gun. According to the post, if you want to buy some fruit at this produce stand, you calculate your own tab and just leave some money in the box. It's all about trust, which is ironic, considering I find it hard to trust anyone who spells PlEASE with the offending lowercase L, not once, but twice in the same sign.
The word PlEASE is fast becoming the most popular observed and noted violation in the lowercase L world. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, when people write signs, they are generally trying to be polite, so they use the word PlEASE a lot. Anyhow, I've posted the photo to the left as an example of a lowercase L sighting that does not truly qualify as an offense. Observe that, while all the letters are uppercase except for the lowercase L, the L stands taller than the rest of the letters, and is therefore unlikely to be confused with an uppercase i.
Sent in by Shep, our man on the field in the UK, this may be the first example of an inappropriate lowercase L that has actually been published and circulated. Look at track #9, AT lEAST IT WAS. You may be Thinking Out Loud, "Nothing Brings Me Down ... except an errant lowercase L!" In Shep's own words,Just when I was despairing of ever finding a single example, along come two in almost as many weeks…
So, hot on the heels of the Williamsburg ‘PlEASE TAKE WHAT YOU WANT’ find, see attached photos of the sleeve of Emiliana Torrini’s cd ‘Fisherman’s Woman’ (released a couple of years ago, at least in the UK).
Slightly mystified as to the how and why this has happened (it’s repeated in the inner sleeve), but I can see at lEAST one oddity here…
Just as my neighbor was about to mail this letter to the TRAFFIC VIOlATIONS PlEA UNIT, I noticed several violations of his own! The first two lowercase L's in VIOlATIONS and PlEA are not so offensive, since the lowercase L is slightly taller than the other letters, and some of the i's are lowercase and dotted to balance things out. But take a look at AlBANY. Folks, this is the reason we have ZIP codes. Otherwise some poor mailman would be driving around for days on end, looking for Aibany, New York, only to grow frustrated go postal on you, ultimately leaving your letter undelivered, and your fine doubled. How you gonna' talk yourself out of that ticket, my friendly neighbor?
Submitted by way of friend of a friend, Shep passed this photo onto Simon, who delivered the goods to me. Taken in Williamsburg, this super example of lowercase L is as good as they get. PlEASE TAKE WHAT YOU WANT comes across as more of an existential message, beckoning, "Draw your own conclusions about why I may have written all these letters in the upper case, except for the L". I cannot begin to fathom the thought process, or lack thereof, while this sign was being constructed. Maybe the L was an afterthought, squeezed in after the rest of the letters were already written? Or maybe there are just so many signs out there that spell PlEASE this way that the author thought it was correct.
