Richard Jeffrey Newman

My mother sent me this in an email, though it’s orig­i­nally from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Diary in The New York Times. It so makes me wish the gram­mar course I was sched­uled to teach had not been canceled:

Dear Diary:

While wait­ing for the next shut­tle from Times Square to Grand Cen­tral, I notice an ad for an inter­na­tional bank. The bill­board shows a Joe Six-Pack type on his recliner in front of the tele­vi­sion, can of beer in hand, but has an eco­log­i­cal theme. The cap­tion reads, “Recy­cling one can saves enough energy to power a tele­vi­sion for three hours.”

Directly below the cap­tion, four graf­fiti writ­ers in suc­ces­sion have weighed in, the first chiding:

“1) ‘One CAN save’

“Or

“2) ‘One SAVES.’

“Never ‘One can saves.’ ”

Beneath which, the sec­ond explains:

“They’re talk­ing about an actual can.”

Beneath which, a third comments:

“I love a city where graffiti’s about grammar.”

Beneath which, the fourth adds simply:

“Word.”

–Jeff Honig

Tagged Grammar, Just Because

§ One Response to Graffiti and Grammar

• Richard Scott says:

  January 31, 2011 at 6:23 pm

  Gotta love that.

  The other day I saw one that read “Is it wrong to steal a book on morality?”