Before Sept. 3, motorists in Georgetown could spot not one, not two, but three signs instructing them to “YIELD TO PEDESTRAINS CROSSWALK.” One “pedestrains” sign was in the 1300 block of Wisconsin Avenue NW, and another was in the 1400 block. The third, at the corner of Wisconsin and O Street, had been tagged by a perturbed reader: Scrawled in black marker alongside the message was “mis-spelled,” with an arrow pointing to the offending word. Spelling mistakes are rare on the District’s roughly 300,000 traffic signs, says District Department of Transportation spokesperson Bill Rice. But though signs look like standardized products, Rice explains, approximately 20,000 are custom-made. “Unfortunately, errors do creep in,” Rice says. The Georgetown signs were made years ago in the department’s sign shop, he adds, “on an old machine that has since been replaced by machines with spell-check.” —Sarah Godfrey