Commas save lives

Thanks to my design colleagues at Zerofee, who tweeted me this little gem, illustrating the potentially life-saving properties of the comma:

It’s from the Dweebist blog. Which seems a rather good thing in itself.

Filed under: Contributions, Punctuation

Unrealise your potential?

Richard Weston, aka design blogger AceJet170, has been in touch about something that, he says, ‘makes [his] head hurt’.

As well it might. Richard had spotted this online:

If you can’t read that line top right, it says, Untap Your True Potential. This was the bit that gave Richard pause.

He’s also spotted this:

Hmmm.

Random capitals aside, something weird is happening here. It’s one of those peculiar misunderstandings that leads people to say things that are the exact opposite of what they mean.

The problem may result from a confusion with phrases like, ‘Unleash your potential’.

Trouble is, ‘Un-‘ is a negative prefix. It means you’re doing the opposite of the verb concerned. Unleash means not to leash – a linguistic point of particular importance to dog handlers.

What the lines above mean, of course, is ‘tap your true potential’.

That sounds rather ugly, though. You’d probably say, ‘Realise your true potential’ or, indeed, ‘Unleash your true potential.’

‘Untap your true potential’ is not only the opposite of the intended meaning, it’s also pretty meaningless. You can’t ‘un–‘ something, unless it’s something already done. (Like ‘Untying the furious copywriter’.)

So you could only ‘untap your potential’ after having tapped it. Which wouldn’t make much sense.

Sadly, a Google of this phrase shows how rife it is. There’s even a Facebook group:

This is nothing new

Of course, there are other, accepted phrases that mean the opposite of what’s intended.

Famously, for example, our American cousins say, ‘I could care less’, when what they really mean is they couldn’t care less.

We also say that a man who’s quick to anger has a temper. But if he gives vent to that anger, he loses his temper.

That doesn’t make much sense. You don’t get angry by losing your anger.

Temper, it turns out, has a pretty interesting and complex history. But this isn’t an etymology blog, so if you’re interested, have a look at Wiktionary and this blog post. You start to see how this confusion might have come about.

The point is, we’ve ended up with phrases we all understand, but which contradict each other completely. Purely through usage.

This suggests that a nonsensical construction like Untap your true potential could quite easily become part of the language, simply because enough people use it incorrectly for it to come to mean the complete opposite of what it says.

Now my head’s hurting, along with Richard’s. And yours, probably.

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PS: If you have any other examples of phrases that mean the opposite of what they say, do let me know. Thanks.

Filed under: Confusing, Contributions, Downright ugly, Grammar

Saying nothing, twice.

Sarah Porretta of Cadbury has found time in the midst of being eaten alive to send me this message she got from Facebook.

In case you can’t read it, the message says:

Could not post to Wall The message could not be posted to this Wall.

It annoyed Sarah not, she says, ‘just because of the copy itself, but because Facebook are unable to explain to me either why I could not post to wall, or why the message could not be posted to this wall.’

Refusing a request without any explanation is bad enough. In this case, Facebook has decided to do it twice. Which does seem unnecessarily rude.

Filed under: Confusing, Contributions, microcopy, Tone of voice

Not the greatest

Elaine Gibb (I don’t have a link for you Elaine, sorry) sent me this ridiculous typo, which she spotted on a poster in a bar.

Elaine saw it. I can see it. You can see it. So why didn’t whoever produced the poster see it?

‘I saw it in a bar at Christmas time,’ says Elaine, ‘but I don’t think that’s any excuse. Maybe he was afraid of getting decked in the halls…’

I can’t think of a better joke than that one.

Filed under: Contributions, Typos

Confusification

Designer Gareth Hammond tweeted me with this picture from the Twitter settings page.

‘Is this even a word?’ asks Gareth.

Well, I suppose it’s a collection of letters you can (just about) vocalise, and you have a sense of what it means.

But the answer is, clearly, no.

Filed under: Confusing, Contributions, Downright ugly

Death by loquacity

David Hyde has sent me this glorious (and topical) bit of verbiage. As he says, it highlights a common problem: that when ordinary, sensible people are given the task of creating public communications, they often feel a pressure to speak in this sort of highly complex, formal language.

Rather than begin with the real warning, the author kicks off with a rather redundant bit of background. ‘As a result of the prevailing weather conditions…’ The fact that this sign is outside, and that everyone in the country is well up to speed on the prevailing weather conditions, is not apparently an issue.

Buried in the middle of the sentence is the important information that everything’s very slippery. And then, right at the end (albeit in red), is the actual imperative. And even that’s several words too long.

This sort of writing is bad at any time. It’s especially unwelcome in a warning.

Imagine being a soldier at war, and one of your comrades yelling, ‘In these uncertain times of conflict and violence, you may encounter men ready and willing to take your life by means of a firearm. And there’s one right behind you.’

In your final moments, it would be difficult not to feel a twinge of resentment.

Alternatives? There would be a few ways to do this, I imagine, but the one thing it ought to be is short.

There are two things to say: Everything’s slippery, and Take care. We can do it in so few words that the order becomes almost irrelevant. BEWARE: ICY SURFACES, perhaps. Or, SLIPPERY SURFACES: TAKE CARE. It’s so short, you take it in all at once. And you’ve got time to read it before stepping onto the sheet of black ice just beyond it.

Filed under: Contributions, Verbiage

I’ll see the first patient now, nurse.

Daniel Gray, aka @binkythedoormat, tweeted to see if I’d mind subbing this little beauty:

(Click the pic to see it on Daniel's Flickr)

Sadly, it’s hard to see it as anything but a lost cause. You’re firing away with hyphens, when suddenly out pops an underscore. It could happen to the best of us, I suppose.

But surely only the very worst would look at it it, shrug, and print it on the side of the car.

The treatment is simple: a reprint, using only hyphens. Unfortunately, I suspect the patient would refuse it.

(Thanks for being my first contributor though, Danny.)

Filed under: Contributions, Downright ugly, Punctuation, branding, hyphen, livery