The Oba­ma’s are redec­o­rat­ing the White House walls. Ed Ruscha’s “I Think I’ll…” (1983) (shown above) was one of the pieces select­ed for place­ment. It was bor­rowed from the Nation­al Gallery. Typog­ra­phers and graph­ic design­ers can spot this work’s short­com­ing with a deep root­ed embar­rass­ment. There’s an error with the apos­tro­phe in “I’ll…” This mal­formed apos­tro­phe is known as a dumb quote. Its prop­er form should curl to the left.

The error is exac­er­bat­ed by the fact that the piece was hand let­tered. One would think that such a process of trans­po­si­tion would have left time for a cor­rec­tion. This shows it’s not a typ­ing error but an igno­rance of the prop­er use of the Latin alpha­bet.