Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Don't draw it, shout in my ear

Entering the loo of an unfamiliar restaurant or filling station I am often beset with uncertainty: which door for fellas and which for the other lot? I’m a wordsman, proud to know the meaning of riparian - prehistoric man responded to pictures but for me their message is non-immediate. Especially when heavily stylised (see inset).

At 70 mph my doubts become riskier (see above). Because journalists are told to eschew exclamation marks (screamers) I ponder their justification at the roadside when I should be stamping on the brake. The tee-boned car graphic raises the question of verb tense: “Has happened.” or “Will happen” The hare seems fast enough to look after itself. While the car sign is as useful as a warning about oxygen in the air.

But God forbid I should ever have to wrestle with the philosophical implications of the unavailable T-junction. My first interpretation was “Do a U-turn” but does the red diagonal forbid the reverse direction as well? I mention these things on behalf of a dying minority – aged literates.

SUPERIOR SPAM? My new AV software, Kaspersky, has just blocked an attempt by Cambridge University Press to sell me the works of Ruskin. I need to think hard about this.

EBOOK TRIUMPH Plutarch is re-reading GORGON TIMES to check how I’ve responded to his suggestions. He points out, quite gently, that digesting 100,000 words via a computer monitor is not easy. So I’ve loaded the MS on to my Sony ebook reader and posted it to him. He reports it’s now “easier to make notes” suggesting the publishing world may have to wait a little longer for this masterpiece.