The signs of an English street: This article is the first in an occasional series which takes a look at how English is used in the everyday world of the urban landscape.

Abstract

Street signs are an everyday part of our lives. Yet their language and form reveal important aspects of written English. The aim of this article is to open the reader's eyes to some common features of English street signs by looking at some of the signs in a typical street, Leazes Park Road in Newcastle upon Tyne. On one side of Leazes Park Road the buildings are three-storey nineteenth-century brick townhouses, on the other assorted modern brick and concrete offices, shops and clubs. It is a mixed street of dentists, offices, shops, restaurants, flats and clubs; its signs are typical of English city streets. The paper forms part of a research programme looking at street signs in England from different perspectives (Cook, 2013); a complementary short paper looks at the signs of the traffic junction in Leazes Park Road.