Otherwise very literate signs...

...can show the disease as well. This one was at the local market. It's well-written, very comprehensible, and displays good penmanship.

AND YET IS HAS A THIRD GRADE FRICKIN' ERROR !!!!!

Not to WiNE, but....

Stephanie and I were buying some WiNE the other day when we stumbled across a cornucopia of unneeded tittles. We could have stayed for an hour just capturing the variety instances, but we decided just to get a few representative samples.

Some days I start to wonder why this is sooooo easy....

Great Food, Great MUSiC

(this one is a little blurry)

Steph and I went to see Les Miserables up at the North Shore Music Theatre recently and stopped at the Wild Horse Cafe for dinner first. Great place. Also features LiVE MUSiC apparently.

Again, we find an example with amazing purity, every letter uppercase except the "i"s. A true classic. Embarrassingly excellent.

Hall of Fame Quality

Matthew sends us this gem from Homer City, PA. It has lOWERCASEl issues. It has apostrophe abuse, and yes, our local favorite: A badly placed tittle!

Lovely. We're all doomed.

TRiBUTE TO A FAllEN HERO

William points out that one of his lowercasel posts fits here, too.

A stunningly illiterate tribute to one of America's finest.

On the topic of "large" pizzas and such...

Let me say first that when Steph sends me photos of her tittles, that's just a good day all around...

These two signs are on the window of a pizza place in Agawam, MA, near Six Flags. They are good examples of the "every letter but one" being uppercase. Note on the second picture that the author decided the words in all caps don't start with a tittle, but can have one in the middle. Shall we call this a middle tittle?

But these great tittles are just a distraction from the better story on this day:

Have you ever ordered a "large" pizza in Western MA? Where I come from (and at every national chain), "large" means a big, round pizza with 8 slices, right?

Not in Western MA, apparently. Steph had budgeted $30-40 for pizza for her son Matt's party at Six Flags (we were tailgating), but it cost about $100 -- because out there a "large" is a 3-foot-by-4-foot monstrosity.

We ordered 4.

For 15 people.

It was Matt's 14th birthday, but we're still trying to figure out whether we'll need a U-Haul to help him bring the leftovers to college...

BRiNG 'EM ON!!!

Steph and I were just as happy as these folks when watching the Sox punch their ticket to the WORLD SERiES last night. Or maybe they punched their TiCKET. I'd have to ask. Were it not for the lowercase "n" in BOUnD, the perfection of these examples would be breathtaking.

Go SOX!!!

First Anniversary Fish?

Stephanie noticed something fishy about the new Chet's sign we saw the other day. She thinks maybe the first anniversary for a fish and chips plate might be a little ... foul?

Anyway, Chet returns with a vengeance. The "i" in ANNiVERSARY is new, and better made than the older "i"s in FiSH and CHiPS.

Quoth Steph:

"Can't be sure if Chet's does have either those customer or co-workers. But one thing is certain, they continue to have appalling letter casing skills. This tempting one takes the Tittle Trifecta Trophy...

And what does 'first anniversary fish and chips' mean anyway? Can't be good...

Think they'd find the humor if we suggested that the eatery be re-written as CHET'S DiNER???"

True that.

Literacy Campaign

EUREKA!!!! I finally get why this happens! We teach our kids to do it as part of their summer reading program. Maybe it's an intimidation thing. Maybe an uppercase "I" in and around those other uppercase letters would scare little kids.

Arrgh.

Exercising Bad Capitalization

You could argue that this health club owner is just exercising a God-given right to bad capitalization. But we're not here to be nice, now are we? There are several letters here that are the wrong case (lowercase, because most are upper), but this has examples of my two faves: The "L" in "ClASS" and the "I" in "PriZES".

Certainly not an example of fitness in signmaking....

Exotic Meat

This one is a little hard to figure. Why only one lowercase "i"? But then I've never tasted lion before, so I decided to check it out anyway.

Tasted like chicken. Go figure.

Where to Begin....

I can vouch for the food at Chet's, but...

FR NT? If you guessed "FRONT", you lose. It means "Friday Night". And Chet clearly broke a sweat on those lowercase "i"s. I'm thinking hand drawn AND hand cut.

Clean Shirts "r" Us

Here's a garden-variety example of the affliction. The part that leaves me in stunned amazement is that these bad "i"s are obviously hand made. The owner the sign must look down at their lettering kit and mumble: "Those idiots. They didn't put any "i"s in here. Guess I'll just make one."

It follows that the thing that comes between the "H" and the "K" is a lOWERCASE L in their minds.

I'm still a little curious about the actual manufacture of the dotted "i" though. Do you use scissors? Tape? Do you have to go to the store for clear cellophane?