Grammar mistake on sign leads to multiple parking tickets

Your high school teachers were right — grammar is extremely important.

Drivers in Ludlow, England were perplexed when they were hit with parking fines after misunderstanding a sign with a grammatical error.

The sign, which reads “COVID 19 No parking enforcement in operation,” appeared in a parking lot at Castle Square — a local shopping center.

The sign is meant to warn shoppers that there is no parking available due to the global pandemic — but because it is missing a period after the word “parking,” confused drivers thought it meant no parking enforcement.

‘The sign should have read, ‘No parking. Enforcement in operation,'” Andy Boddington, a local government representative, told the Daily Mail. “It was obviously confusing.”

At least four people were fined in spite of the clear grammatical error.

“I would encourage anybody who’s got parking tickets to challenge it,” Boddington said. ‘The whole operation was literally done in days and you make mistakes when you do things in days.”

Paul Graney, a local student who noticed the sign, told the Daily Mail that the sign was “extremely misleading.”

“It shows how important punctuation is,” he said. “It’s quite farcical, to be honest, they need to sort it out.”

Council members told the Daily Mail a period has been added to the existing sign, and corrected signs will also be erected in the near future.

“This was an honest mistake and we apologize for any confusion caused,” council member Steve Davenport said.

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