The best photo I took during my family road trip to the University of Alabama this spring break was inside a workout facility. No, I'm not a creeper who takes pictures of sweaty people. I took a picture of a directory, with arrows pointing all over the place, telling students where they could find the nearest bathroom or climbing wall.
Of course, I focused in on one word: womens.
According to the English language, though, that's not a word. Yet, Alabama must think it is. The same directory was placed elsewhere in the facility, with the same glaring mistake.
But since many of the gym's employees gave me strange looks as I snapped a picture during the tour (they must have thought I was a camera-happy, overly eager incoming freshman), I doubt they even realized its misspelling. In all fairness, most people probably have to pee so badly that the word "womens" could be replaced with womans, womans', womens', women or wemen, and the message would still be received, and no one would think about it twice (I don't know about the last one, though).
Still, how hard is it to realize that the word "women" is already plural, so adding an "s" to it is redundant, not to mention, wrong? I suppose I wouldn't have as big a deal with this if it wasn't used by a university in multiple places. And I think the whole my-sister-may-go-to-a-college-that-can't-grammar-check thing probably adds to my frustration.
By the way, what's up with that European town that wants to eliminate all the apostrophes from its road signs? That just encourages laziness.
Alright, I'm officially getting off my high horse now. I need to go to the ladieses room.
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Don't worry, you're not the only one that gets irked by this kind of stuff :) I don't know if it's because we're journalism majors or what, but I tend to notice/point out grammatical errors too. Some of it is just plain silly, and would only take a minute to correct, so I don't see why people don't bother.
ReplyDeleteI must say that I am not really one for grammar and tend to make careless mistakes a lot of the time. But when I do notice that there is a mistake, I know that it is really wrong. And I do take pride in the fact that I find these mistakes. I think that it is ridiculous that things like this happen and are on the walls of buildings. It really makes the school look uneducated and careless. I think that people should really just edit and double check things.
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