When I was driving down the road last week, I noticed this sign.

Now, that’s just wrong!

Bo calls this a negative juxtaposition.  A sophisticated name for something that’s just plain silly.  But it made me remember a few others I’ve seen around town. I posted another one a few days ago – ELF STORAGE. It wasn’t a misplaced “S”. Just a family name/combination of initials.  But it was too good to pass up.  I think I’ve discovered a new hobby – carrying my camera with me to take photos of crazy signs.

I often wonder if the people who write the signs do this on purpose. Do they realize the jolt we’ll get when we read them, or are they just happy accidents?  And what about the messed up headlines that pop up in the paper and on the internet? Probably half and half.  Either way, they do make for a lot of smiles…at least, on my part.

Signs and headlines like these are a sort of wake-up call for writers, I think.  They serve as reminders that sometimes what we say isn’t exactly what we meant.

When we talk about editing, we are usually thinking about the technical issues, so we can clean up our writing.  But we should also be looking out for words and phrases that aren’t right.  Once I read a line about a “wench attached to the front of the jeep”. Sort of brings a different picture to mind, doesn’t it?  And watch for messed up phrases. I sponsor contests, and now and then I think I’ve given understandable instructions but others have a different interpretation. Punctuation can make a great difference, too.  You’ve seen the cartoon – “Let’s eat Grandma!”  Hmmmm…

When we are editing our own work, our mind zones out because, well, WE knew what we meant when we wrote it.  Consequently, we miss some of those errors.  But a long time ago someone told me a sure-fire way to edit your own work.

Read it either backwards or scrambled.

Yup. Instead of starting at the beginning and going straight through to the end, either shuffle the pages so they mess with your mind a little, or read it from the back page to the front. Some people read magazines and newspapers that way, all that time.  Alice (remember her? In Wonderland?) encountered many characters who spoke nonsense, and – bless her heart – the more she confronted them, the more muddled things got.  If they had read their words backwards or shuffled, they MIGHT have made more sense! Come to think of it, I’ve read books like that…

Anyway, doing this makes you pay attention to all the sentences, because it breaks the train of thought you had.  It does work (and besides, it’s funny!). With a poem, scramble the lines, or at least the verses.  You’ll notice misspellings and phrases that don’t make sense.

By the way.  A few days later the gun shop added a line to bottom of the sign.  WE HAVE GUNS.

No….it didn’t help.

Have a great Christmas. See you Friday.

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I ran across this….a truly backwards written poem.  Cool. huh?