An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun, and may also specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference. The articles in the English language are the and a (the latter with variant form an). An article is sometimes called a noun marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic term.[1]
-- Wkipedia (June 2009)
This morning I watched the Spousal Unit remove several tubes of toothpaste from their packaging, and so I found myself reading instructions.
Best used if squeezed from bottom.
Why is it that instructions don't use articles? Assembly instructions especially use this clipped sort of English that never uses the word 'the' or very many prepositions either. It's fodder for jokes. You can't tell whose bottom or which bottom needs a good squeeze. Are the Aquafresh people telling us that we need to be more sexy in more ways than one? Is it not enough to use the toothpaste for minty bright smiles, but we have to squeeze someone's bottom as well? Or are we supposed to put it in our bottoms and squeeze from there?
My first inclination was to think that in the bad old days before electronic publishing (now there's a term nobody cares about using any longer) that access to variable spaced fonts was limited, and it was the prohibitive cost of having instructions printed up that forced and economy of words. If so, then why would we continue the practice today? Surely nobody has any love for the brevity of such English. Instructions are generally a source of great anxiety and frustration. Next to Legalese, Instructionese is probably the most dreaded dialect of English. I can't imagine that they do the same trauma to the syntax of other languages. Or maybe this was just some huge practical joke by Scandinavians when they realized they had a market for unassembled furniture over here in the States. Hey Lars, what's the English word for 'dowell'. I'll tell you only if you leave out the word 'the' in all the copy. Ha ha, that's really funny Lars, let's do it anyway. Yah, let's.
The French would never do such a thing. They've sexualized all their nouns. There's no such thing as an 'it' in France. 'It' is either a he or a she. I suppose that's why more often than not, the French don't get it. But at least their instructions are easy on the eyes, not that they build anything. Haha. Wait, do we like the French. Let me check the instructions.
Insert Obama into White House
Visit Leno
Insult Queen
Blame Bush
Cheat GM Debtholders
No I didn't see anything for the French and I'm fairly certain that I've only got a particular version of the Obama instruction set and not the exhaustive collection. But you see how this brevity can be very annoying and lacking in nuance. It's very computer-like and unlike the sort of English we actually want people to be able to speak.
What to do, what to do?
I suppose we could agitate for a law that reconciles this bonehead English with the version educational types find useful for their trade. You know, with the appropriate obeisance to French postmodern philosophers. So instead of 'Best used if squeezed from bottom', we might have the following fine print:
The main theme of of this empowering essay on dialectic discourse is not situationism as such, but neosituationism. Therefore, if postsemiotic patriarchialist theory holds, the application of liberating anterior pressures is the subtext of choosing between prematerialist feminism and the capitalist paradigm of renewed oral reality. “Society is impossible,” says Sartre. So It could be said that Bailey would favor a Rousseauian cum-Hobbisan pan-liberation of all pressures simultaenously resulting in the most empowering externalities.
I mean what's the point of having small fonts if you can't use them to put intellectually stimulating messages on tubes of toothpaste? But maybe that's a bit of overkill.
Nevertheless, as I've said before, the Obamacrats (because everything is ultimately fodder for my brain-dead politicking) find solace in sophist[icated] language. We can rest easy because their hubris is somewhat limited. Since they honestly believe they are the only ones with language capable of communicating real knowledge, they haven't bothered to dictating the form of ours. Still enthralled by the twin sirens of math and science they haven't bothered to apply real discipline to their own Arts and Letters and thus are unaware of their own solopsis, yet confident enough in it to throw empty barbs at those enamored of common sense and plain talk.
Now on the other hand, especially among those who dig drivers and shooters, gearheads from the Right who like things that go boom or vroom, there is a certain obsession with technospeak. This is, as we should all readily admit, the only reason we are attracted to Chloe O'Brien. And we are therefore responsible for the meatheaded dialog of men in black fast roping for helos. How many heartpumping moments have had as their climactic moment the final declaration of 'Clear!'? I'm not talking about... well I guess I'm talking about defibrillation too. But that would not be a heartpumping moment, at first. I was actually extending the SWAT metaphor over fences, through batterrammed doors, behind flashlights and weilding MP9s with ACOG scopes. Hup. Hup. Hup. Clear! Not even so much as a noun in that fragment.
I suppose that on our end we have Tom Cruise to blame for starting the romance. How many people are as culturally challenged as to shop for chicks in desert bars via the lyrics of the Righteous Brothers? You may very well be named Iceman for all that Neanderthal expression. I'm trying hard not to show it but baby I know it, we've lost that loving feeling for complete English sentences. By the way, here's the finger for the inventor of the Scantron. When will we ever learn that there is no such thing as mass higher education?
So I am left not knowing whom to blame for the invention and perpetuation of Instructionese. So I will rebel by squeezing my wife's bottom. I'll let you know how it turns out. Not.
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