Your so smart

In my home town, they are resurfacing one of the main thoroughfares and, as I was driving home from a meeting on Wednesday, I saw this lighted road sign:

"Double
Lane
Closure"

"Tell
Sunday
Night"

Now, unless Sunday Night is a person and the construction company wants us all to tell her (or him) about the double lane closure, my guess is we are dealing with a serious devolution of the word "until". Let me demonstrate:

Until   >   'Til   >   Til   >  Tell

Which is annoying, confusing, and reinforces stereotypes about construction workers' intelligence, but may not be the worst lighted road sign I saw this week. It was at least helpful once you figured out what the author was trying to say - something I can not say for this sign:

"Road
Work
Ahead"

"Next
Four
Weeks"

There is nothing technically wrong with that example, but if you didn't see it the day the construction company put it up (and mark your calendars accordingly), there is no way to know when the four weeks of construction will be done. Therefore, the notice is completely useless; when I saw it, I didn't know if the construction was nearly done or had just begun.

However, if the author was trying to be funny and play on the fact that construction projects are rarely done on time, then I award him (or her) props for creativity and subtly mocking the system. But I also take away those same props for forcing me to think too much about it.