A new sign for I-95 misspelled ‘Central.’ PennDot hid it under a black cloak.
PennD’Oh! A company contracted by the agency made the sign and will replace it, PennDot said.
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Officials touted the permanent completion of repairs along I-95 last month, less than a year after a truck fire collapsed the busy interstate, but it seems like the roadway just keeps taking Ls after one of its vital signs was found to be out of whack.
Around the corner from Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Holmesburg, a newly-installed sign for the yet-to-be-opened on-ramp to I-95 South on Cottman Avenue that should read “Central Phila / Chester” instead reads “Cenrtal Phila / Chester.”
Philadelphians, who have a reputation to uphold for never letting anyone live anything down, generally fell in to one of two camps about the sign on social media: those who wondered how this could happen and those who’ve seen the sign but didn’t register the error.
After a weekend of getting lambasted online for the mistake, PennDot draped a black cloak of shame over the sign on Monday.
As a writer who knows that sinking feeling of seeing a typo in her work, I understand that misteaks do happen, even if there are exactly zero words in the English language that begin with the letters “cenrt,” according to Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary.
(Editor’s note: Please don’t send us e-mails about misteaks — it’s a joke.)
The fix
PennDot spokesperson Alexis Campbell said in an e-mailed statement Monday that the agency was aware of the mistake on the sign, which was erected June 21.
“The sign has been covered, the misspelled word will be corrected tonight, and a corrected sign will be installed this week,” she said. “All costs for correcting this error will be covered by the contractor.”
The cost for the lighting, foundation, and installation of the sign was $100,000, Campbell said, but she did not identify the company contracted to make and install it.
She said the contractor was given the PennDot-approved design, which did not have the misspelling, and the contractor provided PennDot with the details on where it would be made and when it would be installed.
“This error should not have happened and definitely should have been caught before the sign was installed. We are reviewing our processes to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” Campbell said.
But she didn’t tread into what was perhaps my most burning question, one that’s been vexing me for years that I finally had cause to ask about: Why does PennDot use the term “Central Phila” on its highway signs to begin with when everybody in Philly calls it Center City?
I have to wonder if leaving the misspelled sign up until it can be fixed wouldn’t be better than covering it up so nobody can see it. Sure, it’s an embarrassing mistake, but people can still understand what the sign says even if the middle letters are swapped (a phenomenon known as the transposed letter effect).
Typos of days gone by
Taking ownership of a very public (and relatively harmless) mistake with a little humor can generate goodwill, or, at least a good laugh. I can’t help but think of my favorite errors and corrections I’ve seen during my career in Philadelphia, all of which ran in the Daily News:
Oct. 8, 2009 — We’re still trying to figure out why Boston’s skyline was pictured on yesterday’s Page 3 when it should have been Philadelphia’s. Honestly, we do know the difference.
July 1, 2014 — In yesterday’s “Chillin’ Wit’” column, a fond farewell to former Daily News editor Zack Stalberg as he heads west to New Mexico, Stalberg was misquoted as using the term “horse manure.” He responded: “I demand a correction. Does anyone really think I would use the word ‘manure’?” No. Stalberg actually said, “horse s—.” And that’s no bull manure.
May 24, 2015 — Because of an editing error, a caption in Wednesday’s Daily News referred to the “late community activist” C.B. Kimmins, who is very much alive. He was generous in accepting our sincere apology.
As I said, none of us are perfect, but unlike AI, our imperfections — and our ability to laugh at ourselves in the face of them — is part of what makes us human. A colleague and I once received an Associated Press Managing Editors award where “Philadelphia” was misspelled as “Philadephia” — presumably, by editors — and I still accidentally mistype my last name as Fart sometimes. It stinks, but it’s also funny.
In this case, it would have been great to see PennDot lean into the mistake by quoting ‘90s Swedish pop group Ace of Base’s hit “The Sign” while asking for a little leniency: “I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign. Life is demanding without understanding.”
Of course, the sign in question is not the first public typo in Philly history. When a section of Broad Street was renamed Patti LaBelle Way in 2019, the Streets Department forgot to capitalize the “B” in the Godmother of Soul’s last name.
In 2021, an exit sign was erected along I-95 in Delaware on which “Delware Avenue” was misspelled and last year, SEPTA misspelled Philadelphia as “Philadlephia” on a new sign for the Conshohocken platform.
Some even think there’s a typo on the Liberty Bell, given that “Pensylvania” is inscribed upon it, but according to the National Park Service, it was an acceptable spelling of Pennsylvania at the time.
While we’ll never know the wonders that the mythical land of Cenrtal Phila held, this sign serves as a reminder that we all face bumps in the road sometimes, even PennDot.