This has probably been discussed, but I missed it. Is there some special way to write the names on street signs? Here's what I have: When the road curved, and the headlights reflected off of the green sign, ‘Beaver Dam’, he pulled the car over.
Should Beaver Dam be in italics without the quotes?
Posted by Corky (Member # 2714) on :
I don't think there's a special format. Just putting what's on the sign in quotes should do.
A stop sign doesn't even need the quotes, nor would a yield sign or some other sign where the type of sign is part of the name of the sign.
Posted by tj5to1 (Member # 8575) on :
I was thinking that I could also just say: When the road curved, and the headlights reflected off of the green sign, BEAVER DAM, he pulled the car over.
Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :
I think the last one is the way I have seen it done. At least in some books and/or stories. But there may not be a set way of doing it.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
In real life, there's an appalling new regulation in the United States, that all street signs are now to be spelled in both capital and small letters. I don't know how long it'll take to change over (the expense-during-hard-times is the main issue), or how it'll affect writing it out.
I think either "quotations" or CAPITALS will do the trick here, for readers of the material. Italics are indicated in manuscript by underlining, but this is only for the typesetters.
Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :
Um, it's not "both" capitals and small letters - it's "normal" case (i.e. capital first letter, then lower case).
The regulation was actually passed in 2003 and allows the relevant authorities until 2018 to make the changes. Most signs are replaced around every ten years anyway. So the actual cost of the change is... effectively zero. But of course this has been seized on as another example of "wasting taxpayers' money" in the election run-up here (presumably it would be so much cheaper if there were no road-signs at all, after all everyone could just rely on sat-navs or smartphones).
Sorry, it's just that thi sort of thing gets repeated and misreported and skewed and it annoys the hell out of me.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
What would be really difficult to show would be if all of the letters were capitals, but the first letters were bigger than the rest. For some reason, that's what I thought Robert Nowall was referring to. <shrug>
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
A distinction that only matters to typesetters.
They specified the type face to use, but I don't remember what it was.
Here's a link to a story dated September 30th on Fox News...but I first saw it somewhere else more recently, within the last few days. Never heard of the typeface in question...