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Confusing the reader

8/17/2010

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Posted by Jon
Spotted recently, pinned to a hand-dryer:
This facility is unavailable due to essential maintenance works
… because ‘broken’ really would have been too simple.

Along similar lines, on a trip to Versailles a month or so ago:
The tour continues on the opposite side of the peristyle.
​OK, make me feel stupid. Peristyle? Where do I go now? Oh – you mean the walkway with columns that I’m standing in.

Why is it that people writing notices – or proposals – feel the need to try and impress the reader with overly-grandiose language? And don’t they realise that, in their attempts to impress, they actually achieve the very opposite?

And then sometimes there’s stuff that’s just weird – like the name of the shop I passed in my cab en route to Abu Dhabi airport, all-too-early the other morning having run a course there for a great group:
​Syria Flower Butchery
​No, I couldn’t work it out either. But there seemed to be more flowers around than carcasses, and I’d be more than a little concerned about asking them to make up a bouquet…
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    BJ Lownie and Jon Williams are the co-founders of Strategic Proposals.

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