Friday, July 31, 2009

Make First Right

Okay, don’t we turn right? I guess make is acceptable street lingo, direction-wise. Make First Right on Erie—From Newark Ave, there is no left on Erie because on there is no Erie on the left (Not making a left on the metaphysical portion of Erie is the cooperation the sign is thanking you for; Techincally, you could make a left if you're heading East not West on Newark, but when heading East the sign is across the street). I guess they want to alleviate anxiety and any chance of confusion by assuring drivers looking to park that the Erie turn (make?) and the First right are one and the same. You can make a right on Erie, or make your first right, and you’re on Erie. Talk about a false choice. But then, how come we make right “on” Erie, but right “onto” First—which is technically the second right. If you start with the word on, wouldn’t you use onto to mean towards instead of another way of saying on, which is supposed to be “at” to begin with! Make Second Right at First. Maybe that’s more confusing. Let's move on to punctuation. Okay, it's a sign, we can forgo puncutation, even when it might alleviate termporary conufsion—closed to access lot sounds like access is an adjective not a verb—but then why put a period at the end? Why go out of your way to make this non-sentence a run-on non-sentence? Shouldn't a rule for sign writing be punctuate clearly and correctly or not at all! Maybe the purpose of this sign is to confuse so the JCPA parking lot isn’t over-used. Like many things, directions can be clearer when spoken than printed.

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