Restroom or Restrooms?
Yesterday afternoon, I came across a news program that was doing a story on Mr. Sato, the man who makes very cool signs out of adhesive tape in Tokyo’s major stations. Here is a clip of Mr. Sato creating a sign:
When he finishes the sign it looks pretty good. However, the reporter shows off how smart she is by letting him know he’s made an error. Silly Mr. Sato, you’ve put an “s” at the end of restroom!
But is that really wrong? I have seen several signs before that say restrooms instead of restroom. Would it be confusing to customers if it had a “s” at the end of the sentence?
Sato ends up removing the offending letter from the sign, leaving a bit of a space between the words and the restroom logo. He considers the space between the logo and the words to be a failure, and gives the sign a 50% rating.
[Another question to ponder: is rest room as two words more proper than restrooms?]
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Kind of off topic, but… That helmet is awesome, I want one!
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Of course “restrooms” is okay, unless you have unisex loos. There are, presumably, one for men and one for women (wait, isn’t that sexual discrimination? “separate but equal is not equal!”) after all…. He is most emphatically NOT wrong.
However he should avoid mechanical spacing in the future if he can.
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The best irony of this post is the misspelling in the post title. Awesome if intentional!
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Um, yeah, it was intentional.
I went to an outlet mall today and found that they had signs that said “restrooms” and “rest rooms.” The outlet mall was operated by an American firm, I think….
Writing “Rest Room” as two words looks more awkward than the “s” on the end. Still, this guy does nice work. I loved the bit with the curvature of the “R”
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I agree with overthinker, if it was just one unisex restroom, it would be okay to drop the ’s’. Seems most in the poll agree!
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Now all we need to do is find some way of submitting the poll data to the TV station and reporter, where it can be properly ignored….
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That’s just not very nice to feature a guy’s work and then embarrass him on television!
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Webster’s New World Dictionary indicates that either spelling is acceptable and both one word and two words are also OK.
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“Restrooms” is not only OK, I’d have to say it’s *preferable*. That reporter is from the same brain trust that gives Japan “cashers” instead of cashiers, and the tortured English translation, “let’s [something] together with me”.
I can understand the ~15% of voters not knowing whether the ‘S’ is OK or not, but the ~15% who think it’s *wrong* kinda scare me.
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Plural. As in more than one. Silly female…
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restrooms sound such a naff name for a toilet anyway. sodding american language is everywhere
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Excuse me sir, can you direct me to the water closet?
Well, I do see “WC” quite often….
Tempted to take a pillow, blankets, a mug of cocoa and a good book into one and see what happens if I try and rest….
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