Normative Signs: The Poetry of "Ought"

One of the main points of this blog (if it has a point, which it doesn’t) is that there are many, many ways for people to use signs to tell each other what to do. Whatever it is that you want someone to do, there are a plethora of ways of saying it — differences in wording, phrasing, tone, punctuation, and so on.

But seldom do you get different methods demonstrated in a single location.

Here’s a fun example from a beach community in South Carolina. The first sign pictured says, hey, this is private property, buddy. No feeding the fish. Simple.

About 30 feet to the right, however, is another, more official sign that seems aimed at the same objective, but does a much better way of telling you why it is important not to feed the fish.

And then, not shockingly, 30 feet further to the right…yes, the woman in red shorts is feeding the fish.