Comments on: Weekend Word Wrap: curious instructions

By: Tech Writer Deb

Tech Writer Deb — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:55:28 +0000

Greetings to all! The secret is out — this column (and subsequent posts) are exactly the reasons why I pursued a degree in Technical Writing. To be fair, not all manuals start out in Mandarin or Farsi. Many start out in engineer speak, developer speak, or, worse yet, business speak; these are worse since most of the writers believe that English (either American or UK) is their first language. Convincing them otherwise generally requires a dictionary the size of a small vehicle, as well as backup from a real Thesaurus and a good style guide. I generally recommend the Chicago Manual of Style, since it also is rather hefty. The heft of the support materials is actually quite important — if the eloquence of your argument doesn’t sway the miscreants, the volume can be utilized (an in joke for the tech writing audience) to deliver quite a nasty blow to scalp, fingers, or toes.

By: sd

sd — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:59:29 +0000

i always love how the tags on the cords of hair dryers warn you (with words or pictures) not to use in the bathtub
i know a hair dryer in water is very dangerous, but a) not only is this common sense & b) why in the world would you dry your hair while in the bathtub? maybe someone foolish could rationalize it, thinking itll save time – but it’s not like you can wash the rest of your body whilst drying your hair! you’d need 2 hands at some point of either action! … i understand the warning not to use the dryer NEAR a bathtub full of water, but i feel like it’s unnecessary to warn against using it while IN the tub!

@heather – that mapquest thing never ceases to crack me up!

By: Mom2boys

Mom2boys — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:43:30 +0000

It’s been several years, but remember when those car window visors to block out the sun were popular. I remember mine had a warning in the bottom right corner that said “Remove visor before driving” DUH!!!

By: Pierre

Pierre — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:28:16 +0000

Memo to Doc:

I agree with you! And: Sadly, Horatio will succeeed in making Miami safe, even without you!

Worse: Are the people who design modern remotes, all idiots?

All the buttons on my JCV remote are roughly the same size and shape. And they are all grey, with white markings beside them (on the casing).

A button I use often – MUTE – is tiny and stuck with the channel numbers. As for the buttons on the TV, well, for modern TV’s, I can never figure out the volume -vs- the channel buttons without pressing them FIRST!

I labelled the small metallic grey buttons on the metallic grey case of my Electrohome TV with white paint:
A white blob on the power button, and a Big V above the two volume buttons, and a big C above the 2 channel buttons. And since the Audio & Video plugs are identical, I labelled then V and A in white. I intend to do the same to the JVC.

The same applies to knobs, buttons and switches in CARS. All are usually black, small, labelled in tiny letters, and nearly identical in size and shape….

Might this not contribute to auto accidents? Especially at night?

And what about winter? Here in Canada, it gets COLD. So we wear heavy gloves. Are all cars designed in some lucious tropical place? If so, don’t the black buttons get searing hot in the sun? Might not a flat matte white be better? Which might help the rest of us too?

Lights burn out. Must they all be positioned and mounted in such a way that the talents and tools of a Starfleet Engineering Crew is needed to change a silly front turn signal bulb? Or is this a ploy to lure us to the Dealer so we must pay a mechanic $40 to do it? And some other bulbs are worse.

NASTY: One “automatic switch” died in my Plymouth Acclaim. (An otherwise pretty good car…) My mechanic charged me $500 to fix this. The dammed thing is buried in the dashboard, out of reach of anything. They had to take half the car apart to fix it….

Honestly, should not the government be passing laws about this, rather than forcing us to use inefficient, unsafe, and polluting, and highly problematical fluorescent light bulbs. Which incidentally do not last 7 years. Try 7 weeks.

I have to go. My blood pressure is rising. And I have not even mentioned computers or the internet….

I will spare the readers further rants. But I may come back to read theirs…..

By: heather

heather — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:41:15 +0000

A few weeks ago, my mom showed me something funny on mapquest.com. If you type in the prompt for a route from New York to London (I think. I forget the exact locations), it’ll give you a bunch of driving directions until about the 23rd one down, which says to “Swim across Atlantic Ocean”. Heh. Easier said than done.

And a favorite of mine is on a package of Dove soap: “Use like regular soap”. Big help there.

By: Magnolia

Magnolia — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 04:48:38 +0000

I purchased an inflatable mattress to accomodate a weekend gathering of my 6 sisters at my house. When we took it out of the box and were reviewing the instructions on how to properly inflate it, we found the instructions to be in French. We determined we would have to depend on the illustrations. We were doing fine until one illustration stumped us. The illustration showed the hole in the side of the mattress where the air pump was to be connected. It showed a human hand stuffing a banana into the hole. It then had the circle with a slash, indicating not to do what the illustration was showing.

We couldn’t figure out why this illustration was there. Had the manufacturer received many complaints of people who encountered lowered performance of the mattress due to stuffing bananas into the air hole? It would seem that more complaints would have been received regarding M&Ms or grapes, as they would have fit better.

By: Slim McCoy

Slim McCoy — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:12:20 +0000

On a vending maching burrito that I had the dubious joy of eating a few weeks ago, the cooking instructions read: “Heat Until Hot”.

You think?

I wonder if they should add “Eat Until Gone” and “Repeat Until Full”… just for the folks that aren’t so quick on the uptake.

By: sporkk

sporkk — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:58:05 +0000

re: Cousin
My friend and I were just talking about that. The only emergency we could come up with that would require paper towels was if someone was bleeding profusely… but in that case, I think they’d have bigger problems than the towel dispener malfunctioning.

By: antisense

antisense — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:16:35 +0000

A few years ago, my mom got a prescription for back pain or something. The pills were fairly large.

The prescription label on the bottle said, “Take one daily in right eye.”

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 18:52:36 +0000

My boyfriend bought a scope for his shotgun from a gun show a few months back, the instrucion manual was translated very poorly from chinese to english, ie insert doorknob into elbow and turn,