Photo 4

This sign is located at a trash dumping facility and is riddled with errors. The first is the use of the word courtesy before assistance. The meaning that is being conveyed is clear, but the problem is simply that the wrong word form is used. The noun form courtesy is used instead of the adjective form courteous. The phrase should be courteous assistance, not courtesy assistance.

The second problem is that the clause "If you do not receive courtesy assistance" is a fragment and cannot stand alone. Instead, it should be joined with the sentence following it. The sign should read: "If you do not receive courteous assistance, please contact..." Note that in combining the clause with the sentence following it, the period after assistance has been replaced with a comma, and please is no longer capitalized.

The final error (as if the ones already mentioned were not enough) is the use of the hyphen between thank and you, which is simply unnecessary. Hyphens serve many purposes in the English language, but this is not one of them. "Thank you" is the same as saying, "I thank you." A hyphen would not be needed in a complete sentence such as this one, and it is not needed in "Thank you" either.