Linguistic Obsession

"Want to see smoke come out of my ears, just show me a misplaced apostrophe or an improperly used transitive verb." I didn't write that, but I'll be nice and not edit the wonky use of commas by my generous host.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Boolean mistake

Seen on the back of a bottle of nail polish:

Keep away from heat or flame

There are a few problems with this:

This implies that you should keep it away from one or the other, not both as I'm sure was the intention of the warning. (Gee, I think I'll keep it away from heat today, but not flame.) At least it should say "heat and flame".

The "or flame" (even "and flame" should problem #1 have been addressed) in pointless unless non-hot flames have recently been discovered. The word "heat" covers flames as far as I understand the concept of fire.

1 Comments:

Laura said...: Apparently, this warning is meant for the sort of people who regularly put plastic bags over their own heads (hence the warning on the plastic bags to "keep away from children").; 11:50 AM