It’s been a while since I outright vandalized anything, so I kept an extra-sharp eye out for any kinds of errors on my commute time.
It didn’t take long — I saw an error on an ad in a red line car.
TEFL CERTIFICATE
“Learn to teach English worldwide”
So we have the quotation marks, and we don’t even have an exclamation point?
Ugh, unwarranted quotes are awful! Are you supposed to imagine a guy in the back who just shouts these lines out?
Location: MBTA Subway, Red Line, between Kendall Square and Central Square
I crossed them out with my trusty Sharpie, which I now keep in my purse at all times.
There we go. Perfect.
That’s the closest shot I got, but the train was a bit bumpy. (I didn’t want to do it while we were at a stop. The MBTA is strict — people weren’t allowed to take pictures until very recently. Still, I didn’t want to press my luck.)
Unwarranted quotes are bad.
I felt like defacing a Budweiser ad that said Beantown on it. I hate the word Beantown. I don’t know of anybody who lives in Boston and actually likes it.
But I could be wrong. Does anyone from Boston out there like Beantown?
The Grammar Vandal 
Can you come to Houston? I live by “The Funnest Shoe Store in Town.”
Aside from grammatical problems with those quotes, I think quotes actually undermine the credibility of the service provider. While other companies can simply state the fact that their certification services offer recipients the ability to teach around the world, this company needed to go out and find someone who would state this fact. And allegedly, at that. They did not care to state their source!
But, even more than that, I find it hilarious that a program aimed at teaching people how to teach English contains a grammatical error. How coincidental! š
(Hopefully someone else will catch my drift!)
Elisabeth, I was in Texas last March (Brownsville, to be exact) and I was shocked at how much I loved it!
Coast-to-coast grammar-vandalising road trip, anyone? š
And dlipkin, I agree with you — when I see errors, I don’t trust the service provider. How coincidental, indeed — and how IRONIC that I was reading about teaching English abroad when I saw that sign!
(jk, jk, jk….see the “ironic” posts from before….)
Yes, I believe that quotation marks are the victims of gross abuse.