The saga of the run-on sign is not the kind of injustice that will inflame hearts and minds. It's not exactly the civil rights movement. But for Strick and Tomsha, there was a matter of fairness involved, and they each spent more in time and effort to fight the tickets than the $60 penalty was worth.
“It wasn't the money,†Tomsha said. “It was the principle of the thing. Our main goal is we'd like the sign changed.â€
That's funny. Way to go Tomsha!
Here's a link to some corporate signage that's outright depressing ...
http://www.illiteratebusinesses.ca/
First of all, I love that my profession is willing to fight over grammar and punctuation. Such fights have happened long before Sir Roger Casement was "hanged on a comma" under the British Treason Act in the early 20th century, and similar fights continue to this day. See, e.g., Mark Painter, More Punctuation Problems, 33 Mont. Law. 40 (Feb. 2008).
Second, however more subtle (or, shall we say, nitpicking), the misinterpretation of the ungrammatical sign also points to the loss of the hyphenated adjective in our modern writing. To explain, if multiple adjectives were always hyphenated for clarity, then, if the sign were to say what Tomsha insisted it said, the correct phrasing would be "NO PUBLIC-PARKING PERMIT REQUIRED" — that is, one does not need have a permit labeled "Public Parking" to park in that location, and, with no other requirements listed, one thus needs no permit to park in that location. That interpretation is what he was insisting upon, but it still makes no sense. I have not seen the sign's layout, so I have no idea the strength of that argument, but I think the standard street-sign regarding parking is only about 12 inches by 18 inches (I've been screwed twice by such signs, in Santa Monica and Westwood, with their varying tiny print, and had $60 parking tickets each time to show for it). Which means if visibility, clarity, and punctuation are three considerations, punctuation would be a very distant, nearly-imperceptible, third.
I totally agree with your point that the correct hyphenation of compound adjectives is becoming a lost skill. And I agree that if your intent of the phrase "public parking permit" is that the permit is for public parking then it should be punctuated "public-parking permit." However, it is a possible interpretation that the permit is both for the public ("unofficial" people; hoi polloi), and the permit is for parking, in which case the absence of a hyphen is would be correct.
Of course, neither intent was in the mind of the "author." But the unintended reading is plausible, grammatical, and semantically reasonable.
Glenn said:
...
Of course, neither intent was in the mind of the "author." But the unintended reading is plausible, grammatical, and semantically reasonable.
And, acquitable.