Tuesday 31 January 2012

Peeving in Bath


Some people feel very strongly about the use of the phrase train station. They say that it ought to be railway station. No doubt they're right, as it's a station on the railway. But since when did logic dictate usage? We all have our peeves, and there's not a damn thing we can do about the way other people speak. Anyway, someone has got cross enough about signs pointing people to the 'train station' in Bath that they have done something about it:



People modifying signs in that neighbourhood has a good pedigree though. My grandparents live in one of a row very old Georgian houses, built around 1740. They're known as Ralph Allen's Cottages, because a chap called Ralph Allen built them for his workers to live in. Unfortunately, the sign at the end of the street says Ralph Allens' Cottages. The man was not called Ralph Allens. No one is called Allens. His name was Allen. This made my granddad so cross that he crept out one night with a paintbrush loaded with a bit of white paint (he's an artist) and very neatly painted the apostrophe into the right place. 


What's even worse is that the sign next to it, which is the same design and looks like it was made at the same time, denotes the first house in the row as Ralph Allens Cottage. They can't even be consistent in being wrong. 

3 comments:

  1. Erm, would I be wise to point out that 'stone masons' should be one word? No, I wouldn't.

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  2. Oh good grief, you're right. The errors are piling up.

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  3. Unless they were masons made out of stone, of course.

    ReplyDelete