What does it mean when the sign outside a butcher shop says:
Our hamburger is ground "fresh" every day!
Should we question the dealership if the sign out front promotes:
Huge discounts on all "new" cars!
Where do we go when the sign says:
Turn "right" at the light.
Yet, as I was driving last week, I passed a sign where the ambiguous quotation marks actually seemed to make sense. Sadly, I was driving at the time - so I didn't take any photos.
Here's the set-up: I was driving along Interstate 90, having just entered South Dakota from Minnesota. The billboard - which was advertising something I no longer remember - was located about 3/4 of a mile before the next exit, calling drivers to:
Exit right "now"!
I looked at that, and thought "well, there's a bad use of quotation marks!" But then I thought about it a little more and decided to give the sign maker the benefit of the doubt. After all, if a driver literally exited where the sign said to exit ("right now!"), that driver would have ended up driving through a ditch, through a fence, and across some farmland.
If, on the other hand, the driving reader realized that "now" was in quotation marks to suggest that it was indicating a relative immediacy, as opposed to a concrete immediacy, he or she would also realize that turning off at the next paved exit was the way to go.
With that in mind - and with the forgiveness that comes with Thanksgiving (yet seems to quickly go away on Black Friday) - I have opted to applaud the sign maker's use of the quotation marks.
Okay, yes, I may be over-thinking this just a tad. But I had pumpkin pie on my mind at the time, and so the benefit of the doubt seemed like a good way to go.
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