Who needs reindeer when you have kangaroos?

Qantas have added decorations to their flying kangaroo in the lead-up to Christmas.

Here’s Rudolph the red-nosed kangaroo:

And in an email from Qantas, we have antlers too! ;-)

On a more sober note, I wish all my readers a very happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2013.

As in previous years, I won’t be sending out Christmas cards to clients etc. Instead, I’ve made a donation to the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

[Link last checked December 2012]

A light-hearted look at how punctuation can change meaning

Based on a recent ‘Writing Tip’ I wrote for my work colleagues.

****************

Bottom Line:

• Lack—or overuse—of punctuation (especially commas) can alter meaning and/or result in ambiguity.
• Ambiguous sentences are hard to understand and can be misinterpreted, thus potentially putting lives at risk.

I’ve written before about commas before (see the information on serial/Oxford commas in lists: http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/the-serial-or-oxford-comma/), so this time I’ll use some light-hearted examples found on the internet about how commas and other punctuation can change meaning.

Example 1:

“Most of the time, travellers worry about their luggage.”

Now delete the comma after the fourth word to totally change the meaning of this sentence:

“Most of the time travellers worry about their luggage”

Example 2:

“Stop clubbing baby seals”

And with a comma added you get this:

Example 3:

Here’s how the magazine printed the headline:

She cooks her family and her dog (yes, the dog looks worried!)??? I think they meant “…finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog.”

Example 4:

Example 5:

It’s not just the addition or lack of commas that can change meaning. This example shows how the placement of punctuation, such as full stops/periods, commas, and question marks, can turn something that seems loving and innocent into something more sinister:

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is all about.

You are generous, kind, thoughtful.

People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me for other men.

I yearn for you.

I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart.

I can be forever happy.

Will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Now let’s see how those same words read with the punctuation in different places:

Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is.

All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you.

Admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me.

For other men, I yearn.

For you, I have no feelings whatsoever.

When we’re apart, I can be forever happy.

Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

On a more serious note…

While these examples are humorous, they also apply to the words that you write. For example:

No commas:

This initial workshop identified the work scopes and phasing generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

Commas added (option 1 – single comma after ‘work scopes’):

This initial workshop identified the work scopes, and phasing generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

Commas added (option 2 – multiple commas to separate phrases related to the workshop’s outcomes):

This initial workshop identified the work scopes and phasing, generated several different sourcing strategies for those work scopes, and proposed selection criteria to compare the sourcing strategies to best benefit the [project].

It’s likely that the final example was what the author meant, but a reader who wasn’t at the workshop can only guess as to what happened there. If the author had added commas, the meaning would be clear and unambiguous to any reader who didn’t attend the workshop.

A job ad that pulls no punches

From New Zealand:

Signs and labels that make you go ‘Oops!’

I was in Bali recently. English is their third language, so I tried not to notice awkward English text and phrases or odd spellings. However, a couple of pieces of text made me whip out the camera and take a photo.

The first was on a menu at an Italian restaurant (no, I don’t know why we went to an Italian restaurant in Bali either!). Seven of the menus at the table listed ‘grilled aubergines’, but one had this:

The drinks menu where we were staying had this:

Signs seen along the road included these:

I’m still not sure how you can make ‘antique’ furniture to order!

And then there was this road sign of an exclamation point — I’ve never seen one before, and most of the ones I saw in Bali didn’t have any text below them like this one does — anyone know what this sign means? I assume it’s a danger or warning sign of some sort.

Do they grow the cotton first?

Oh dear. Typo in local newspaper this week:

Unfortunately, a person who sews can be called a ‘sewer’ (pron. so-er), but that can be easily misread as ‘sewer’ (pron. sue-er) as in the human waste disposal system.

It’s possible that the person who wrote this headline saw ‘sewers’ and thought it looked too much like the waste system, and thus changed it to ‘sower’, which has a totally different meaning altogether and means a person who plants seeds.

Further on in the copy, they got it right as ‘sewers’, but that headline was just plain wrong. If the headline writer wasn’t sure about ‘sewers’ then perhaps they should have reworded the headline to something like ‘Members come from far and wide’ or ‘National sewing guild AGM popular’ or similar.

Which reminds me..

When I attended a quilt workshop in Texas earlier this year, Laura Wasilowski did a ‘show and tell’ presentation where she told us about finding the tomb of the unknown sewer… ;-)

Tomb of the unknown sewer

[Photo from http://ww3.brevardcounty.us/usd/faq.cfm]

[Links last checked 25 July 2012]

Unfortunate URL shortening

Great article, pity about how the URL was automatically shortened where it was! ;-)

You can read the article here: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

[Link last checked 21 July 2012]

Dinner with the editor

I loved this! ;-)

(from: http://www.creators.com/comics/6/78285_image.gif)

Visual edits: Power to the people

My colleague, JC, sent me these photos of a billboard advertising a new beachside housing development on some old industrial wasteland that is fronted by a dog beach (a place where owners can run their dogs freely). Over the past few years there have been moves by the local authority to shut down or shrink the size the dog beach, probably because the sight of dogs spoil the million-dollar ocean views from the high-rise apartments. The dog-loving residents have always turned out in mass protests, usually accompanied by local celebrities and the problem the goes away for another year or so.

JC said: “This morning I noticed this artistic edit to the large poster on the way to the beach. The original image had the boy running towards his ball lying on the sand. Now he is holding a yellow bag, which is the color of the dog droppings bag the City provides. The ball is now painted over with a silhouette of a dog doing what dogs do at dog beaches…”

More labeling woes

Sometimes you just wonder how people decide on the names for their company/product…. Their website gives you no clue as to the origin of the name either. And searching Google brought up a lot of hits totally unrelated to chilli sauce…

Update from one of my readers:

They have now a new product called “Jerk Sauce”. I’ve got a bottle of this and on the back label it says “tested on humans. Bon appetite!” One questionable labeling after another and it does not seem to stop! Apparently they have another sauce product called something “rub”.

My assistant Linda was there with her family and they approached the lady at the stand and asked about the name. The owner knows that the name is rather inappropriate (as their friends keep on pointing out to her), but apparently this is a family recipe and that’s what they always called it, so they decided not to change the name.

At least the stand gets the crowd talking and it appears to work as a marketing gimmick. Linda bought $50 worth of sauces from them and the entire time she could not stop giggling.

 

Spellcheck blunder

A work colleague shared this Microsoft Word spellcheck suggestion…