Entry 007: Swimming Rules, Skaneateles Lake (Rules Project)

Over the July 4th weekend, I visited Skaneateles Lake, a pristine body of water in the Finger Lake Region of New York, and a favorite vacation spot of the Clinton family.  It is also situated about ten miles from my childhood home, so I know the area well.  Skaneateles was also my school's rival -- I remember running against their cross country team (and losing), and playing tennis against their doubles team (and losing), but I digress!

At issue in this post is the sign posted near the public swimming area of the lake.  I snapped a picture as I walked by, at dusk:

"Public Swimming," says the sign, "when lifeguards on duty." 

This is grammatically incorrect.  First, the sentence is missing an action.  Public Swimming WHAT?  Public Swimming allowed, I imagine.  So we will add that to our sentence:  Public swimming allowed when lifeguards on duty."

There is one more error to fix.  If we added an article, we could correct the sentence to "Public swimming allowed when lifeguards are on duty."  Or, we might assume that the article has already been added, but that an apostrophe is missing.  In that case, we could correct the sentence to "Public swimming allowed when lifeguard's on duty."