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In Los Gatos, CA where I live, there used to be a chiropractor's office with the following sign painted on the window. I wish I had taken a photo. - Chiropractic - - Wellness - - Prevention - Bob | ||
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I obviously am missing something... Sorry to be a dunce! | |||
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Er, who would want Wellness Prevention, Kalleh  .Reminds me of a plaque we found on the outside of a restroom in an RV park outside of Hillman, Michigan. It said something like... In Memoriam William J. Kronk ...and right beneath the sign was this nasty, rusty, beat up sink/wash basin. Always wondered what Kronk did to deserve that. I have a picture, but it is buried under twenty years of stuff at this point. Myth Jellies Cerebroplegia--the cure is within our grasp | |||
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But the sign doesn't say "Wellness Prevention." It says - Chiropractic - - Wellness - - Prevention - There's a distinct difference. It's a chiropractic office that specializes in wellness and prevention, not "wellness prevention." I see nothing wrong with the sign. Tinman | |||
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So, I imagine, did the signwriter and the chiropractor. However, Bob, Myth, and I (and presumably plenty of others) do find it amusing. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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At the risk of stating what seemed obvious to me... While the sign doesn't say anything wrong, there is the implication.... 'nuff said? Bob | |||
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Yes...except, I obviously didn't even get that implication because I just didn't read it that way. That's why I asked the question. I took the dashes to be bullets, as I use them all the time in my writing. However, if you and arnie interpreted it that way, others might too, I suppose. I find interpretations so interesting. Recently I was at a meeting where someone announced (wrongly) at a deans' meeting a large nursing project that she thought was taking place (it isn't) and would irreparably change nursing. The mob scene that followed was comical. People at their tables were saying, "Did she say this?" "No, she said this." "No she didn't, this is what she said" etc... All around the room at least 10 different stories emerged. We're still trying to get the accurate facts on this, but the misinterpretations of these highly educated nurse leaders were amazing. And this occurred after the speaker only spoke for a few minutes. | |||
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Reminds me of the game of "telephone" where a message is passed through many players.... The end result usually bears little relation to whatever the original message was.... Bob (Who mis-uses and abuses ellipses with impunity) | |||
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If the sign had read:
* Wellness * Prevention then there would have been no confusion. But as it included the compound "chiropractic wellness-prevention", confusion was able to reign. Richard English | |||
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I saw straight away both what it meant and why it was ambiguous. It did make me chuckle. But I suspect it's a bit like that drawing which is both a young girl or an old woman. You either see it or you don't. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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No, it didn't say "chiropractic wellness-prevention" It said - Chiropractic - - Wellness - - Prevention - There is a difference. Yes, the sign could have been worded better, but I seriously doubt that anyone really mistook the meaning. Tinman | |||
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I don't imagine anyone misunderstood the meaning - but it's a badly-designed sign. Why should signwriters be allowed to get away with the kinds of grammatical rubbish that other writers would not? After all, accuracy should be one of the prime requirements for the job. Only yesterday I saw a sign, doubtless professionally written at considerable expense, that said "Lorry's turning" (a lorry is the UK name for a truck). So was it a turning for a solitary lorry or was it to warn us that a particular lorry was, at the time, turning? Of course, I knew that the sign was mean to read "Lorries turning" - so why didn't the signwriter know that as well? Richard English | |||
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That's a different case Richard. There was nothing grammatically wrong with the original sign because it was simply a list, not part of ant grammatical structure. On the other hand the juxtaposition of words in the list gave it a potentially hunourous interpretation. How can people get so heated about whether something makes them chuckle for a moment or not? It made me chuckle, it didn't make others chuckle. So what. It wouldn't be such a funny old world if we all laughed at the same things. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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I agree that the examples were different as regards their faults - but they were both examples of a lack of professionalism on the part of the signwriters involved. Richard English | |||
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I've been looking at the original example and trying to decide what about it makes me chuckle, and I've come to the conclusion that there is actually something about it as a list that makes it readable in the "wrong" (i.e. amusing) way. The problem is that while every dictionary I've consulted gives "chiropractic" as a noun, it looks like an adjective. In my mind, at least, there is a tendency to see it as analagous to words like basic, frantic, psychiatric, charismatic or idealistic and to require it to be followed by a noun that it qualifies. So it looks like it should be read as chiropractic [adjective] followed by wellness prevention [compund noun]. In fact so much does chiropractic look like an adjective that I was startled to discover that the first meaning in the half a dozen dictionaries I checked was always a noun and that only one gave an adjectival secondary meaning. I had expected the noun form to be something like chiropracty which I cannot find at all in any dictionary. The bottom line is that it isn't a bad example of the sign writers' art it's just a very slightly amusing (to some of us) ambiguous list, probably slightly more amusing to Brits as the word "wellness" isn't really in very common everyday use over here. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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That's true. Indeed, it's ironic that our NHS - the National Health Service - isn't all that good at health issues; it's generally far better at sickness issues. Try to book an NHS health screening and you'll wait for days; have a heart attack or a fall and the ambulance will be there in minutes. Richard English | |||
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While traveling along the Pacific coast i saw a sign pointing to a dirt road. The sign said: BEACH No Water | |||
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Oh...me, too, Bob (Kberg)! We will get along!  Relax, Bob (Hale). No one is getting "heated" about this question. I find it fascinating to read how so many of you took it to mean prevention wellness. Like Tinman, I never would take it that way. It is much different from missann's example, which, BTW, is hilarious. At a beach, one must have water. However, wellness and prevention go hand in hand in medicine. Perhaps my being in the health professions is why I didn't, don't, and never will see any ambiguity in it. I'd not even recommend changing the sign. That, however, would be different had the sign read: "Wellness Prevention" | |||
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I don't think any of us actually misunderstood what the sign was saying. I do imagine one might want to steer clear of such "subliminal" (or perhaps "hyperliminal") messages in a professional business advertisement, though. I'm just not going to be too eager to visit the chiropractor who is so unaware that he puts that up on his shingle. Myth Jellies Cerebroplegia--the cure is within our grasp | |||
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It is times like this that I wish we were all hanging out together and talking, rather than writing. I've tried to say all along, it didn't even occur to me that one would take bulleted descriptors, lined up on top of one another, as describing each other. So I'd not judge the chiropractor so harshly, though I might wonder about those that would read it that way. | |||
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But the sign's details, as posted here, were not of bulleted descriptors; they were of hyphenated descriptors. Therein lies the difference. You seem to have inferred that the hyphens shown actually represented bullets; I, and others, assumed they represented what they showed - hyphens. Remember, too, in the posting, the hyphens appeared both before and after the descriptors; bullets would have appeared before only. Richard English | |||
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Bullets don't have to be small dots; I've often seen them (and used them) with other marks, such as this one: ~ Yet, my dictionary defines a "hyphen" as: "a short line (-) used to connect the parts of a compound word or the parts of a word divided for any purpose." Which compound word was that "hyphen" connecting? Sorry. I can't agree with you on this one. They most certainly weren't hyphens. You couldn't even say they were hypenating the three words (ridiculous to assume anyway) since they were on 3 different lines. | |||
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They were hyphens - even if they were not intended to be hyphens. And it is quite possible, even common, for hyphens to connect words that are on two separate lines. Bullets can be constructed from all sorts of symbols, even the tilde that you have suggested (which could not be mistaken as its only other use is a sound-modifier to the letter "n"). But to use a hyphen as a bullet is not a very good idea since it has another, quite specific use, and could thus be misunderstood. I actually cited this example last Wednesday to a couple who ran a company that arranged trips to overseas destinations where their customers could enjoy various forms of medical treatment. They both found the whole concept of "chiropractic-wellness-prevention" droll in the extreme! That nobody would seriously be misled is not the point; it is the mental picture created by the poor sign design that many of us find amusing. Richard English | |||
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FWIW I never read them as being anything but bullets. It was the accidental juxtaposition of the words that was funny. All this earnest debate about so trivial a chuckle reminds me of the old maxim that as soon as you explain a joke it stops being funny. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Incidentally as noone apart from BobKberg has ever actually seen the sign I'm at a loss to see how anyone else here knows whether they were originally hyphens, em dashes, bullet points or little pictures of bones. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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I plead guilty of assuming that he wrote what he saw. He could easily have shown bullets had bullets there been. * Like this * Or this * Or even this Richard English | |||
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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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If indeed those lines were used, I don't agree with you, Richard, that they are "hyphens." You state it like, "I am right and you are wrong." No. You and I disagree on this. In my mind, a hypen is used to connect 2 words or parts of a word. Period. While apparently many of you here took the sign both ways, my point was (and I believe Tinman's, too) that I wouldn't have even considered taking it differently from the way it was intended. It must be my medical background that gave me that unilateral perspective. I am perplexed that anyone could take it 2 ways, but apparently many do. | |||
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The mark used was actually a dash which has more than one use. Dashes come in two kinds, "m-dashes" and "n-dashes" and I believe that the one used in the posting was an "n-dash". I called it a hyphen, probably lazily, since that is the most common use for an n-dash. But dashes have several other uses as well and can, as you have suggested, even be used as bullets. But, since they are most commonly used as hyphens I believe an n-dash is a poor choice for a bullet. Richard English | |||
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Bullets versus hyphens really are not the issue. The fact is, when you read the sign, the words will be juxtaposed in your head. There might be a reason why most signs will be written with the non-alphabetical
rather than
If anyone can read the latter without momentarily flashing on "flatulence", then they are probably too straightlaced (or is it anal-retentive ) for their own good.Then again, my teeth may have been set on edge by the idea of any "professional" advertising "wellness" as a product. That already has my snake-oil alarms blaring. What next, "bliss" and "contentment"? Myth Jellies Cerebroplegia--the cure is within our grasp | |||
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Hmm - no idea I'd started a thread... However, dim as my memory might be (10+ years ago), I believe that the original window sign stretched across the bottom of the window to look like this.... ------------------ Chiropractic ---------------- ------------------ Wellness ---------------- ------------------ Prevention ---------------- Besides - I dare say that most people could figure out what the Chiropracter MEANT to say, but perhaps also chuckle at the un-intended meaning. Bob | |||
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Minor point - I typed this in a fixed space font, but the actual web page shows up in a proportional font. The sign was neatly centered. Bob | |||
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Now, now...we're being a little judgmental, aren't we? There's probably some scholar somewhere who has investigated people like me, but I have to admit I don't think the way the rest of you do here. I also would not have taken gas/food/lodging sign the way you do, but after you point it out of course I find it funny. For me, I think it is my habit of reading from the left to the right (except when I read Hebrew). By having the words on top of each other, I automatically don't connect them. I hope that doesn't make me anal retentive or straight-laced... | |||
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Not that there's anything wrong with that Myth Jellies Cerebroplegia--the cure is within our grasp | |||
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Those who are interested in beer might want to click ....... here .....Beer Madness | |||
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Bob, For future use, if you want to use a fixed-width font use the CODE button (the last one on the reply toolbar) to surround the text you want shown as such. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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Jerry, that was an interesting aside. I don't agree with some of their beers, though, like Rolling Rock? I haven't had it, but I think I've heard that it's awful. | |||
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Maybe I'm dim but I couldn't understand that extract. Click on any one of the beers listed and you were taken to another screen that told you that it was a winner. But winner of what, or how, goodness knows. And the only way to get out was to close the screen and go back in - no back-button, in other words. My judgement? A very poorly-designed item. Richard English | |||
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Rolling Rock? Over here that's a brand of cider not beer. (Remember our cider is alcoholic and often stronger than many beers). "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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I think there may be significance in this being the "Signs that mis-describe the subject" thread. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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I am afraid I must admit that you are, indeed, dim.  [Kidding of course]Richard, if you were an American, you would find it hilarious. | |||
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I have not been back to Loveland, Colorado for a long time. They might have removed or replaced the signs that I'm writing about here. There used to be official roadside signs at all exits from the city declaring this point to be "END OF CITY LIMIT." At best, it's redundant; at worst, it violates laws of geometry. | |||
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A restaurant nearby has a chalkboard sign outside on which are written its "dishes of the day". At the foot of the sign is written
Ask inside for more details" I can imagine the conversation: "Can you give more more details about free coffee refills?" "Certainly, sir. If you empty your coffee cup we will refill it for nothing." Not quite what they intended, I think ... Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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But imagine if it went like this... "Can you give me more details about free coffee refills?" "Certainly sir, Coffee Refills was unfairly imprisoned, would you like to sign our petition?" "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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