Recently the redoubtable Henry Gee ranted against the misuse of English by GlaxoSmithKline (see his blog) – and I’m with him all the way. It horrifies me that large companies, employing professionals to design and write these slogans, signs and labels, can’t get it right. I’m fussy enough to be irritated by Sainsbury’s having a checkout labelled ‘Ten items or less’. I even get wound up about misuses that not everyone agrees are misuses. I can’t see CD’s or PC’s, which appear on signs in several retailers, without asking ‘CD’s what?’
However there is one mild misuse of language that instead of angering me, causes great amusement – that’s ambiguity. I can’t help but chuckle every time I visit amazon.co.uk at the moment, because they are so proud about a new addition, and they ask us to ‘visit our new baby shop’. I’ve searched the site time and again and I can’t find a single baby for sale. Similarly, when I see a roadside sign that says ‘POLICE – SLOW’ I can’t help but comment ‘not true, I’ve met some very intelligent policemen.’
So wonderful though precision is, I think the world would be a duller place without ambiguity.
Brian – I am cheering you all the way. I do wonder, though, whether those of us who spot such things have our toes dangling in the shallow end of the autism spectrum, such that we are inclined to take such things more literally than their authors mean them to be.
Perhaps it’s genetic – my mother was always amused by two signs, seen by the roadside.
HEAVY PLANT CROSSING
always brought triffids to mind, and
RABBITS AND CHICKENS PLEASE WALK IN
was redolent of Animal Farm.
The Science News page on BBC Online often has some screamingly funny headlines such as
EXPLODING STAR HUNTERS MAKE HISTORY
My friend Walter Gratzer loves to collect unintentionally funny newspaper headlines. On the science theme he noted
SCIENTISTS GET GORILLAS PREGNANT
World War II was replete with these, and here are two.
MACARTHUR FLIES BACK TO FRONT
and, my all-time favourite
EIGHTH ARMY PUSH BOTTLES UP GERMANS
Is it abnormal to see the ambiguity in such things?
My family (parents, sibs) always has done, and I’m the only one who became a scientist.
I don’t think you have to be abnormal to be a scientist, but maybe it helps.