Saturday, December 15, 2007

Accident Prone

Happy Saturday, everyone! It's been a very busy last three days and work is not over yet. I'm working overtime tomorrow on account of the coming Christmas holidays when the office usually closes so I don't expect to be able to post till around Monday or Tuesday. Here's a quick post and then I'm off to work again.

While traveling down Santolan the other day, I saw this road sign: "Accident Prone." Now, the sign was placed on a rather dangerous curve on the road, which is why it's meaning was pretty clear to me. However, this is pretty bad English! In the first place, "accident prone" is a modifier, it explains something. Like all modifiers, it's not a stand-alone expression. What it modifies has got to be clear. What the sign should have said is, "Accident Prone Area." That way, motorists will easily figure out what "accident prone" is referring to.

Ta-ta!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I used to pay special attention to the English road signs when I traveled down the streets in my hometown in China expecting to learn sth. from them. It seems that I should take a critical view toward the road signs now.