Random Wanderings and Wonderings
Along the Finch hydro corridor, these signs warn cyclists of an 80% grade hill coming up:
That’s one steep hill!
Wait a second, that can’t be right. That’s looks like they’re warning you that path goes straight down the face of the Scarborough Bluffs. But I just rode up this hill and I’m sure I would have remembered if it had actually been that steep. Let’s try a little head tilt:
Yeah, that’s more like it. Toronto signs, the latest in a continuing series.
Call me what you will, but I don’t think that expecting properly spelled food labels in the local Sobeys is asking for too much. Everybody makes mistakes (guilty!), but is it really possible that no employees or managers noticed this label all day long yesterday? Or is it more likely that the staff noticed but just didn’t care enough to fix it? Either way, it doesn’t exactly give me confidence that Sobeys treats my food with any greater care than, say, the local Loblaws.
Much of modern design is sleek and minimalist. Unfortunately, some items are designed to be so sleek that their actual function isn’t always readily discernible. Such was the case with the office mailbox below, located directly across from the building elevator. After receiving one too many gum wrappers and coffee cups in the mail, someone taped up a notice describing the purpose of the sleek little box:
MAILBOX
*Please do not dispose of garbage here*
I frequently say that if a simple everyday object like a mailbox or garbage can requires instructions or explanations, it’s a failed design. Even well-meaning instructions can cause confusion. But all seemed well and good until another note appeared a month later, clarifying what the original note meant by “mailbox”:
And later that day, the grateful sender retrieved the wayward piece of mail and left a thank-you note:
Only in Toronto.
I can’t help but channel my best Fargo accent whenever I read the location on this pizzeria’s flyer.
As funny a mistake as that is (and as much fun as it is to say “East Yark” over and over and over again), the sad part is that an earnest businessperson is probably losing a significant chunk of potential business from people who think that if you can’t take the time to spell-check the name of your neighbourhood, you can’t be putting much care or attention into cooking pizzas either.
My mother mused for a while about starting a side business doing nothing but quick proofreading of flyers and brochures for local businesses before they get printed and distributed with howlers of mistakes on them. For a few bucks, she’d make any necessary corrections before releasing the work to the printer. She got started by correcting flyers that she received and sending them back to the offending business along with a business card and a brochure of her own. She eventually gave up after getting no responses and continuing to receive misspelled flyers months after she sent in her free corrections. But there must be a viable business in here somewhere, even if only for a printer who looks at the client’s copy and says, “Hey, wait a sec…” instead of just shrugging and starting the press.
It’s not every day that you read a story about Tim Berners-Lee that doesn’t mention his primary claim to fame, that he invented the World Wide Web. It’s even less frequent that you see him referred to as a “climate-change expert” without mentioning his long history in computing. That would be because the author of How Bad are Bananas?, the book featured in this story in today’s Star, is not Tim Berners-Lee as identified in the third paragraph, but is in fact Mike Berners-Lee. The Star has already issued a correction and fixed the online version of the story, but I predict ongoing confusion for poor Mike: Amazon.ca currently catalogues the book under Lee M. Berners.
Also listed in the Star‘s correction today is a story about thorium, which originally stated that it has two fewer atoms than uranium. Let’s see, if uranium has one atom and thorium has two fewer, would that make thorium, with its -1 atom, antimatter? No wonder people are so excited about it.
The problem with hand-written signs is that there’s no spell-check to fall back on. This sign in a local Loblaws, which combined two errors in one word, was the very first thing customers would see upon entering the store a couple of weeks ago. Spelling flames aside, it created the impression that the people there just don’t care: whoever wrote the sign couldn’t be bothered to check the spelling of a common word and either no one else noticed or they didn’t say anything. It certainly makes me even warier than usual when it comes to trusting that the food isn’t mouldy or short-dated.
I’ve seen a lot of misspelled signs, but never one quite like this. I can’t even come up with something suitably snarky to say about it. There must be a joke here that’s going over my head.
Among the various disclaimers and warnings in the manual that accompanied a new Bluetooth headset was this oddity:
Do not place this unit in a place exposed to humidity, dust, soot or steam, subject to direct sunlight, or in a car waiting at a traffic signal. It may cause a malfunction.
Huh? I’ve seen my share of odd warnings, but warning against using something “in a car waiting at a traffic signal”? This is new to me. So assuming I have this thing in my car while I go from A to B, what am I supposed to do when I reach a red light? “Yes, I saw the red light officer, but do you know how dangerous it would have been for me to stop? I have a bluetooth headset in my bag!”
For the record, Sony informed me that this is an error in the manual and it’s meant to caution against using the headset while driving. I’m not at all sure how that would “cause a malfunction,” though. Either way, I’d say that this warning is a good argument against writing owner’s manuals while in a car, whether driving or stopped at a red light.
The introduction to the otherwise standard warning on this plastic bag would seem to illustrate the perils of sending an email to a translation service and blindly accepting the result. It reminds me of this prime example of a translation request gone awry, though on a much smaller scale, of course.
R.E. Dietz, famous American manufacturer of hurricane lanterns, is run out of China these days.
This wayfinding sign recently appeared on the Belt Line, just outside the entrance to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. At least the arrow, complete with hand-lettered spelling correction, is pointing in the right direction, unlike some other signs I could mention. There’s an old saying in woodworking: measure twice, cut once. Surely there’s a similar axiom in the sign-making business.