Main Wait
Nice new 12-story building? Check. Nifty quasi-anatomical logo? Check. Building signs checked by English expert? Nope. The signs in this waiting area at the National Heart Centre Singapore say “Main Wait” when they should...
Author: Lucy Day Werts
The mission of a dictionary
If you accept a ‘word’ such as ‘alright’ (which I consider to be a mistake) just because it’s in the dictionary, for consistency you will probably also have to accept ‘words’ that you consider...
Don’t all write ‘alright’, all right?
I must have been told early and often that ‘all right’ must be written as two words because it just absolutely baffles me that anyone would want to write it any other way. But...
Transitive and phrasal verbs and taxis
The word ‘alight’ didn’t used to really be part of my vocabulary, probably because in the US we had a car and we drove ourselves everywhere we couldn’t walk or fly. In Singapore we...
Mind your steps!
Broken idiom alert. This sign at the National Skin Centre pharmacy says: CAUTION! Tripping Hazard. Mind Your Steps! I think in the US we’d be more likely to say “watch your step” rather than...
No Smoking Prohibited By Law
The sign says: No Smoking Prohibited By Law But it should say: No Smoking By Law or Smoking Prohibited By Law or No Smoking Smoking Is Prohibited By Law Why? Because it almost sounds...
Prices are subjected to service charge and tax
The menu at Tim Ho Wan, a nice restaurant for dim sum, says: All the prices shown above are subjected to 10% service charge & 7% GST. It should say ‘subject to’ and not...
Up/down, left/right… lock/open?
This is the lid to a tower of blank CDs. I did a double take when I first opened the package because I would have thought ‘unlock’ would be the opposite of ‘lock’ and...
Dengue warrior
It would be hard to overstate the extent to which I hate mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are deadly serious. But this banner is still funny. For one thing, that warrior, with his Roman helmet, looks really...