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Bloggers love posting pictures of signs — we’ve covered misspelled signs, weird signs, and (my personal favorite) signs featuring unnecessary quotation marks. Well, in further proof that there’s a blog for literally everything, I’ve come across a blog documenting the use of the lowercase letter L among uppercase letters.
Yes, this is real — since 2005, blogger William Levin has been documenting signs in which the letter L is written in lowercase, while the other letters are uppercase. Each entry includes extensive commentary on the sign in question, and the blog has even posted psychological theories about why people use the lowercase L. Levin explains the reasoning behind his blog:
The gist of lowercase L is this: I have noticed that, when people create handwritten signs, they sometimes choose to capitalize every letter except the letter “L”. I can understand using some lowercase letters like “i” and “y”, to stylize the handwriting. But why confuse matters by using the only letter that, when lowercase, is identical to an uppercase “I”?
…But now, having lived in NYC for ten years, I have seen the lowercase L rubbing shoulders with uppercase company more often than you might imagine. So often, in fact, that I wanted to bring the case of the lowercase L to the attention of the public.
My favorite lowercase L so far (from August, 2005):
There’s a lot going on there: in one instance (”LeT”) you’ve got the uppercase L used with a lowercase E and uppercase T. But in the another cases (”PlEASE”) the L is the only lowercase letter in the word. Finally, you’ve got “SlAm” which alternates uppercase letters with lowercase letters. Oh, the humanity!
Check out the lowercase L blog in all its glory.
Signs like that make my skin itch. They run rampant in Tennessee, too.
posted by Pearl on 2-25-2008 at 2:56 pm
I have not noticed any signs like this but now I’m going to be on the look out. I have a strong pet peeve for signs that also use the incorrect words like it’s and its. I liked the pics of the news brief on the MAll tragedy. Interesting that they actually changed it to MALL.
posted by SM on 2-25-2008 at 3:07 pm
You forgot to mention the lowercase L in “PlEASE”
posted by It's good to be the King on 2-25-2008 at 3:34 pm
yes you did, my mistake.
posted by It's good to be the King on 2-25-2008 at 3:35 pm
Best misspelling I’ve seen recently was on a menu board where ‘mussel’ was incorrectly listed as ‘muscle’ THREE times! They normally use caps, but I didn’t notice whether the L was in lowercase–that would have pushed me over the edge.
posted by Jessica on 2-25-2008 at 3:37 pm
my last name was misspelled by immigration twice because it ends with an “I” (hope that was proper use of quotation marks heh) and even though I had filled out the entire form in capital letters, the immigration officer decided “I” was really a small “L” Grrr!
posted by En on 2-25-2008 at 3:57 pm
I’m no handwriting expert, but from what little I’ve studied, I know there is a psychological reason as to why some folks mix their upper and lower case letters in the same word or sentence…i just can’t remember what the reasoning is..
i had a boss who would write in caps, but her ‘e’ was always lower case…it drove me crazy…
i was an design major in college and took on the ‘architect’ block letter way of writing…my ‘e’ has no spine, just three horizontal lines…i tend to make all my letters uppercase for this very reason….
posted by donner on 2-25-2008 at 4:04 pm
You’re an English major, aren’t you?
posted by TP on 2-25-2008 at 4:23 pm
Nope, I was a Library and Information Studies major. Quien es mas macho?
posted by Higgins on 2-25-2008 at 5:11 pm
What gets me is that some of these lowercase “l”s were typed out; I suppose I can try to forgive those people who write out the offense by hand, but if you’re typing in all caps, don’t you have to purposefully misspell the word with either a capitol “I” (in some fonts) or turn caps off to type the lowercase “l” to get the proper effect?! This makes no sense to me!
posted by Erin S. on 2-25-2008 at 5:57 pm
Ha, ha…I meant capital…whoops!
posted by Erin S. on 2-25-2008 at 6:03 pm
There was a girl in one of my elementary school classes whose last name had an ‘L’ as the second letter of four, yet she wrote it as an ‘I.’ One time I was passing out papers and read her name as it was written (the ‘I’ was followed by an ‘A,’ I remember this much), and I got in trouble.
It obviously traumatized me, and I couldn’t understand why my defense wasn’t considered ironclad. (”I thought her name was spelled that way! She wrote all the other letters in caps!”)
posted by Nathan Miller on 2-25-2008 at 6:26 pm
this is bizarre, the letter “L” is one of a few letters people should purposely capitalize to avoid being confused with the letter “I.” i’ve never seen anything like this before, but i’ll be sure to look for it now.
posted by kate on 2-25-2008 at 6:39 pm
My choir director does this all the time. He will do it with other letters too though; just randomly throughout whatever he’s writing there will be upper and lower case letters. It makes no sense at all.
posted by Janel on 2-25-2008 at 10:35 pm
I’ll occasionally mix a lowercase “L” in with mixed upper-case letters when I’m obliged to give my email address for some mailing list or contact database I’d ultimately rather not join. I figure it saves me a bit of spam, and if the person ever asks why his or her emails keep bouncing back, I can point at the address I gave them and say, “that’s an L, not an I, you freaking idiot.” It’s win-win for me.
posted by Aaron on 2-26-2008 at 6:50 am
I’ve been noticing these type of signs for as long as I can remember. I feel so much better knowing I’m not the only one who gets her fur rubbed the wrong way with this. Has anyone (probably everyone) read “Eats Shoots and Leaves”? Where’s my Sharpie?
posted by Mary on 2-26-2008 at 6:54 am
I find myself using a lowercase “L” in an otherwise capitalized sentence, but it’s always by accident and I often correct the mistake. I’m not sure why I do this . . . too lazy to finish it off, I guess. Or perhaps I’m just trying to save space–a lowercase takes up much less room than the capital does.
posted by nutmeag on 2-26-2008 at 7:18 am
The upper case L is unattractive when writing print. So is the E. Plus, the uppercase E takes more strokes to write when you are in a hurry than lowercase e. But, I’m one of those people that will combine script with print letters. Which, I believe, means I’m a psycho maniac. It’s all this kind of nitpicking in society that makes me want to hide indoors.
posted by ella blue on 2-26-2008 at 12:36 pm
I agree with ella, the lowercase l’s just look better.
posted by dw on 2-26-2008 at 1:39 pm
Great - now I’LL be watching for this all week. Thanks.
MY personal peeve is when the decimal point is used unnecessarily in a price. For example, a sign I’ve seen read, “Cookies: .50c or 3 for $1.”
They never would sell me just two for a penny…
posted by TomH on 2-26-2008 at 3:46 pm
Great. I’ll be sure not to let the door Siam. Thanks for the warning. :)
posted by Allison on 2-26-2008 at 8:10 pm
Uuuuurrrghhh!!!!!!!!
posted by sara on 2-26-2008 at 10:26 pm
I mix my letters up because i don’t think when i’m writing, i only notice it later
posted by karen on 3-7-2008 at 4:35 pm