Abstract Spatially interested sociolinguistics has cared little about the semiotics of nonexistence. The present article argues that the field would benefit from deepening its interest in questions of erasure and relative absence. A case in point, as the article shows, is graffiti. By analysing some semiotic facets of the erasure of graffiti, the article brings home the point that a semiotics of nonexistence is deeply embedded in the semiotic regimentation of space. The persistence of this condition calls for an analytical sensitisation to less obvious forms of semiosis.