Friday, August 21, 2009

disdain that defies grammar


oddballgeek writes, " I like how the absence of any punctuation other than the quotes leaves 'change' as a dangler and the rest of it as a plaintive lament: We can't afford bumper stickers. Perhaps they're begging for spare change so that they can afford a second sticker to go with the first (which, interestingly, isn't the sticker they seem to be advertising). Maybe they would like societal change specific to the affordability of bumper stickers or financing of same."

4 comments:

copacetic said...

i love how it's "change" we can't afford, but apparently since 2003 it was a war we "could"

Alissa Grosso said...

Looks like "can't" is both italicized and underlined. Way to emphasize the negative.

Kyle said...

I wonder if there's a provision in the stimulus for helping low-income people buy bumper stickers.

laotl said...

Actually, the quotation marks are properly used (all other grammatical criticisms aside). It is a parody of the campaign slogan "change we can live with" except the word change is referring to coinage. Since this is a "blog" about "unnecessary" quotation marks, I won't address the politics of the sign.