If you'd just given them sometime, they would have figure'd it out.

First, the examples—"Brutally murdered" is only terrible if using any adverb is terrible, which you could argue is. The murder in that story was certainly more brutal than pushing someone off a cliff or unplugging their life support.

"Goes without saying" is an idiom and it means "this should be obvious", not "I shouldn't say it."

As for signs, this is more an issue of semiotics and design than grammar. I have a friend named Nails. Do we know he doesn’t own a salon? (He doesn’t, but you don’t know that.) Do we really need to see apostrophes on highway signs or would we prefer the sign to St. Martin’s actually be readable at 75mpg in all caps, sans punctuation?

Plenty of signs contain unfortunate errors that may be typos or may have been made by folks who haven’t mastered the language, but their main purpose is to communicate clearly, which is why Christopher’s is probably the first case of sign vandalism I actually can support. The original was just confusing.

Back when Questionland existed, someone once posted the question: "What's with all the micromanagement around here?"

Best answer?

"That should be 'micro-management,' with a hyphen."

Only a psychopath would hyphenate PB&J.

@5, I remember Questionland! I really liked that site. Bummer that it's gone down the memory hole.

On topic, sorta: I went to the Wayback Machine and found Questionland's goodbye message after its server died. It read, in part... We're blown-away by the wit and deep knowledge

Morning is a question mark –
Serenity or drama?
Afternoon’s a semi-colon,
Period or comma.

If the day’s routine,
You’d list its parts behind a colon:
Ordinary expectations
Keep those hours rollin’.

Hyphens give one pause, though things
May not be out of joint.
What you must be careful of’s
The exclamation point.

For this little bugger
May show anger, joy or fear.
Many people would prefer
It never would appear.

Punctuation rules the day
And shows us what we’ve got.
Nighttime comes and then we’re left
With dot and dot and dot…
-Ilene Bauer

Unfortunately given the signage space the defacer makes a presumption of meaning as it could be in reference to an automatic shut-off valve. But hey, its not like changing the meaning of signage could hurt anyone, right?

It takes a real backbone to stand up for one's convictions like that. The lacking-in-moral-fibre-not-mention-punctuational-knowhow youth of today would do well to take a page from your book.

You can't remove us from the Facebook feed, they say. We're critically important investigative journalism, they say.

They want a hot latte, but not THAT hot latte!! :-)

Can you go back there and remove the "OFF" as well?

"FAUCET SHUTS AUTOMATICALLY" is sufficient and perfectly clear.

@11 exactly my thoughts every time I go to Charbucks because it is close, convenient, or the only available coffee shop.

Great content, bro.

Slow-news day, apparently