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Signs of the times may include signs that we run across in the workplace and the marketplace on a regular basis. An article in The Dallas Morning News documented numerous signs in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that have egregious grammatical errors. Here are a few.

A mural on the outside of a Dallas building announces “Premier Tonight,” evidently referring to an upcoming movie. The word should be premiere, or first showing of a movie or play; premier means “best” or “foremost.” 

The sign over a business in a strip mall read Bargin. The owner or sign maker would be a loser at Scrabble. It obviously should be Bargain. 

A toy store apologized to its customers: We apologise (British spelling only) for the inconveinance.” Apologize is the American way to spell the first word, and though I’ve seen lots of failed attempts to spell inconvenience, I’ve never seen this particularly pitiful one. 

“Cheep gas” was advertised at a local gas station. Lots of luck with that, no matter how you spell it. “Cheep” is what baby chickens do. Unfortunately, a spell checker won’t help on this one. 

On my way home a few weeks ago, saw a billboard advertising some sort of “tatoo” event. Oops! My computer tried to fix the spelling of tattoo, and I had to override it. 

A local fast-food restaurant advertised a special for 10 peices of chicken. In this case as well, a spell checker will help. In fact, my computer corrected this word automatically, and I had to force it to retain the misspelling of pieces. 

It seems that restaurants are particularly prone to errors. One announced that it was “now open for lunch Friday’s.” Apostrophes are very confusing to the general public—I recently received a call from a client with an apostrophe question. In this example the word is plural: Fridays, as in more than one Friday.