Reader Gary Chapman found this one-of-a-kind beastly guitar, hand-painted by Eddie Van Halen and his 14 year old son, WOlFiE. Eddie may have been hot for his teacher, but it seems he wasn't paying attention to her during penmanship lessons. Actually, this example ain't the worst that I've seen (can't you see what I mean?), since the W is bigger than all the other letters, and the "i" is actually dotted, which makes the lowercase L less confusing.

I think of all the education that I missed. But then my homework was never quite like this.

My friend EMS found this SMAll Coffee in Chelsea. Here is her story in her own words:

ems found out about lowercaseL. she became obsessed. she looked everywhere, but much to her dismay couldn't find any. finally, while walking in a daze through one of her favorite interior design structes in nyc, she was awakened by the ......du du du dahhhhh...this sign that i sent to you.

Chalk up another lowercase L in NYC.

Finally, evidence that the lowercase L phenomenon reaches beyond New England. This one comes all the way from next to Old England ... WAlES, to be exact! Wendy Wong tells us more about her find:

Thought you might enjoy this sign from Mumbles Pier near Swansea, Wales. It's also near Catherine Zeta Jones' house.

At first I thought it might have been a Welsh word, but I double checked with the friend I was with and there were also several SALTYs written on the bar itself.

Swansea is also the home town of a former UK Big Brother contestant who was famous for saying "I like blinking, I do." No wonder they don't have much of an intellectual reputation.

Is there method to the madness in this example? It looks like the author may have realized he was running out of space before he finished writing SAlTY BAR, which would also explain the hanging "R" at the end of the line. But placing an uppercase "L" close to an uppercase "T" with a bit of creative kerning would have done the job nicely, without all the lowercase L confusion.

Well, Great Britain, now that we've got your attention, please continue to float your lowercase L's across the pond.

Jeff G. returns with another fine submission, and explains that both of his PlANTS were found in Salem, Oregon. In addition to the obvious L misprint, this sign has some other fascinating case choices, like the magestic uppercase T's that loom over all the other letters; and the rest of the lowercase L's, all of which happen to be the second to last letter in their words—SAle, BOWl's (oh, snap! I smell an Apostrophe Catastrophe cross-post!), and MARAGOld. Notice these three words are composed entirely of uppercase letters, except for the L and adjacent last letter. What happened here? Is there something about the L that makes people forget they were writing in the uppercase? And when they hit the L, it's all downcase from there?

Either way, we finally have proof that the lowercase L phenomenon reaches far beyond the east coast. Just how far does it reach? Check in next week for the answer.

Submitted by lowercase L volunteer Jeff G., this PlANTS For SAlE sign is a primo example of lowercase L dementia. "PlANTS" could either be "PLANTS", or a badly misspelled "PIANOS". I would hate to follow that arrow all the way to the right just to find a bunch of vegetation when all I really wanted was to tinkle the ivories of a baby grand. And "SAlE" looks like the author was trying to redeem himself by lengthening the lowercase L to differentiate it from an uppercase "i". But he's too late, I'm already scratching my head and looking for another arrow to follow.

I don't know where Jeff G. found this sign, but I don't think it came from Brooklyn. We don't sell plants here, we just steal them.

Yahoo! Picks has chosen lowercase L as the WEBlOG of the day for March 4, 2006!

Read the article via Wayback Machine (updated Jan 20, 2018)