Temporary waiting area

Clutchslip spotted this sign to a "temporary waiting area":


What, as opposed to a permanent waiting area?

To be kept locked when not in actual use

What, as opposed to metaphorical use?

I also love how the text is left-aligned (ragged right, if you prefer to call it that) rather than centred. It gives the sign a certain poetical quality.

Cambridge: Home of Anglia Ruskin University

I spotted this sign while on the train to Ely recently:




Cambridge, home of Anglia Ruskin University.

Wait a minute - isn't there another university in Cambridge too? I can't for the life of me remember what it's called...

Nuts 4 Beer

I didn't blog yesterday because I was at the Great British Beer Festival.

Talking of which, you'd have to be desperate for a pint to take up this offer:

Photo special: 'NO LOCALS'

Many places in the UK are unwelcoming to strangers and outsiders, and I've been to my fair share of them. However, before this weekend, I'd never seen anything like this:



Yes, the signs says "NO LOCALS". It adds: "Any locals found playing on our machines will be ask to leave immediately!!" Red capitals and multiple exclamation marks, no less.

Spotted in Caister Holiday Park (near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk). Thanks to Paul for taking the photo for me.

'Stand up or lay down'

Here's a good example of lie/lay confusion.

I don't want to be too prescriptivist or anything, but most people would agree that the sign should read 'Stand up or lie down...'

I'm not going to go into too much detail about 'lie' and 'lay' because doing so would probably give me flashbacks to my teaching days, but there's some useful information about them on the British Council website.

I took this photo in Croydon last year, as I recall.

Incidentally, I think the rhyme would scan better if the second line read 'Come in and get brown'.

Oh dear, I've just had a flashback to my performance poetry days...

STBO

It's good to see the operators of the ferries that ply the Solent take safety seriously, even at the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious (although if the ferry took on a list the warning might become inaccurate).

By the way, Douglas Adams' excellent Meaning of Liff offers a rather sweet definition of 'insolent': 'Fallen off the Isle of Wight Ferry'.

And on the subject of my beloved island, this very morning Mrs A spotted a car sticker proclaiming the driver as Wight trash. Fair enough; we are, after all, living in the Deep South!

All bags and coats cannot be reclaimed

Yes, I'm still on holiday. Here's something else I found down the back of my hard drive:



So I lose my ticket, and nobody can reclaim any bags and coats until the end of the night? That doesn't seem fair... and what a strange shift from the active to the passive voice in that sentence.

(I actually remember where I took this photo: on a work social in Battersea Evolution late last year. And I didn't lose my ticket.)

Live Italian singer

Yet another out-of-focus photo taken in a pub, although this time there's a difference - the pub was in Huntington.

Anyway: this place has a "live Italian singer" in on Monday. I suppose that's better than getting a dead one in.

Subbing and how it impacts you

I took this shot in my workplace (using my camera phone, hence the poor picture quality).

The message to take away from this is: be careful what signs and posters you put up around subs. And no, those corrections aren't mine!



'Impact' is, however, one of my bugbears. I'm convinced that people only use it so that they don't have to worry about writing 'effect' when they mean 'affect' (or vice versa).

No hats, hoods, proof of age or alcohol

I'm still on holiday so here's another photo from my collection:



So this bar has banned hats and hoods... but has also banned proof of age and alcohol? Time to rethink the sign, perhaps.

(I can't actually remember where I took this snap - sorry!)

Beware the escalator of death

Having spent the past week in Spain I could pass on examples of silly solecisms but I won't because it's hardly fair to sneer at our multi-lingual Continental cousins when so few Brits are prepared to learn foreign languages (my droog JD is an exception to that rule).

In any case this sign, which confronts travellers arriving at Gatwick airport by train, puts Spanish menu typos in the shade. In case you can't read it through the lens of my £25 Tesco camera, it warns: "Keep safe. Use the lifts. A lift is located further along the platform."

The spelling's OK, so maybe this is outside The Engine Room's self-imposed remit, but it's such a fine example of 21st century health and safety that I wanted to share it with you. I wonder if the escalator manufacturer could claim damages from the airport operator for malicious falsehood?

'The best heated smoking area in Whetstone...'

This sign made me laugh. So the pub in question, The Griffin, has "the best heated smoking area in Whetstone with a big screen"...



Whetstone isn't exactly the largest area of London - so how many pubs there have a heated smoking area with a big screen? I am guessing just the one. And if there is more than one, what makes the Griffin's HSAWABS the best?

In other words: isn't it enough for the pub to boast that it has a HSAWABS at all? Especially as the Griffin also offers "the biggest beer garden in North London"...

Photo special: this week special large beer

I spotted this sign outside a cafe in Funchal, Madeira last year. Down by the harbour, as I recall.



(If you can't see the photo, the sign reads: "THIS WEEK SPECIAL LARGE BEER".)

It makes me wonder. Is the large beer special because it is being offered at a special low price, or because it is something that the cafe doesn't normally offer? Or perhaps there's another explanation entirely - suggestions welcome.

Queue here for tickets for future travel

Gingerous has emailed us with the following:

At London Euston station this weekend I noticed a sign at the ticket booths that read "Queue here for tickets for future travel". Which made me ask the question: why would you buy tickets for past travel? Surely all travel is in the future, even if only five minutes in the future.

Well, er, yes – but can you think of better wording? I assume that 'future travel' means travel on any day apart from the current one, only I don't know how to express that concisely and unambiguously on a sign...

Field Stile Road / Fieldstile Road

While one English city has banned apostrophes from its street names "to avoid confusion", it seems that not everywhere in the UK is so worried about consistency in naming:






Sorry about the awful picture quality, I took the photos in the dark with my camera phone.

The road is in Southwold, Suffolk, by the way.

Photo special: way out sign (upside down)

Not strictly an example of interesting language use but I thought it was worth sharing:



I took this photo at London Bridge railway station.

The part of the sign with yellow writing constantly rotates, displaying three different messages in turn.

On the day I took the picture, one of the messages - and as I recall, only one of the messages - was appearing upside down, as shown. Brilliant.

The anti-pigeon spikes on the top of the sign confirm which way is up...

Monday roundup: inline comments, chicken foetus

Too many bits and bobs to wait for a Friday roundup, so here's a Monday roundup instead.

• I've just enabled inline comments on this blog, so you'll no longer be taken to a non-blog page when you comment on one of the posts. Please let me know if it causes you any problems. I found it a bit fiddly to implement, so if you want the same functionality on your Blogger blog, I strongly recommend the Blogger Buster guide to inline comments.

• A good British spoof news website I've only just come across is The Daily Mash. Current lead story: 'Hamilton wins world car pointing championship'.

• One recent story that isn't a Daily Mash spoof but sounds like it should be concerns a chicken foetus found in a Liverpool alleyway. "Stop grieving, it's only a chicken," the Metropolitan Police tells the people of Liverpool in what could be the quote of the year. Thanks for this one, Harry.

• Another great story, this time from the Valleys (sorry! Just teasing!), concerns mistranslated bilingual road signs. Again: thanks, Harry.

Photo special: The Heden Room, Seaton

Right, I'm on holiday yet again so that means photos for the rest of the week. The usual disclaimer applies.

Anyway, I took this snap of a sign outside the Eyre Court Hotel in Seaton, Devon. The name of the function room is 'The Eden Room', but because the words 'EDEN ROOM' are positioned directly underneath the word 'THE', you would be forgiven for thinking that it is called 'The Heden Room'.



I think a better sign would have 'THE' and 'EDEN ROOM' overlapping on the 'E'.

Photo special: please pass the CV inside

Something lighthearted for Friday afternoon.

This photo was taken by Clutchslip in Sutton high street (in London) a little while back: