punctuation according to Utah

Poor punctuation drives me crazy. Sometimes, people obviously just don't know any better, and though you might be irritated, you can't be upset with them. They didn't know. A misplaced comma in an email, an omitted apostrophe (although this irks me more than any other error and requires me to think happy thoughts in order to refrain from pointing out where the poor writer went wrong)... But when it comes to formally published material--like giant neon signs, a menu, or painted signs above the "restroom's"--I can't help but think a stricter standard must be applied. Shouldn't someone who knew something about punctuation have proofread that material before it was put out there for millions to see?

While we were on our driving tour of Utah, we witnessed perhaps the most severe punctuation folly I have ever experienced. It was painted on the side of a giant cliff in fifteen foot white letters, just to the left of where the road curved to the right to avoid smacking into the red rock. There, plainly visible for miles and miles of approaching highway, someone had risked their life to write "Hole N" the Rock," followed by an enormous arrow that suggested a path around the rock. Farther below on a wooden side propped against the rock was further information, which identified Hole N" the Rock as the Utah equivalent of Wall Drug, though clearly not as famous, and informed any reader that could recover from the affront of the larger, erroneous sign fast enough that the store was located immediately behind the rock and would require a sharp left to access it and its "Native American art, jewelry, Navajo rugs, and gas!"

I was willing to make an attempt at forgiveness for the error. Clearly someone knew there should be something around that N in order to correctly indicate the colloquial tenor of the name. Never mind that that something was located on the wrong side of the N and had one too many little tick marks. Perhaps the painter had gotten a little light headed working 100 feet up in the air. Maybe the fumes from the gallon of paint he was holding got to him as the wind whipped him around the cliff that was his canvas, and he failed to correctly follow the instructions written on a scrap of paper in his back pocket. I could come up with many scenarios that went a little way toward making it possible to brush off the mistake (but alas, only a little way). I was following this magnanimous train of thought as I rounded the corner and came upon the actual store, and immediately any shred of forgiveness was forgotten. There it was again, on a large painted sign on the building, and--even worse--in three foot letters spelled out in two-tone landscape rock on the sloping entrance to the parking lot: Hole N" the Rock. Not only had someone risked their life to paint it on the cliff, but someone had also painstakingly sculpted the letters out of rubber edging and filled it with little white rocks, adamantly including the poor misused quotation mark. Our gas tank could have been less than a quarter full, and they could have displayed the most beautiful rugs, and I wouldn't have stopped. I couldn't. I'd succumbed to shopping at King Soopers grocery store earlier--I simply couldn't let myself fall this low.