Читать книгу Working Words - Elizabeth Manning Murphy - Страница 17

28 I was in Sydney one day and couldn’t help noticing this sign above a shop:

Well, a quick glance made me wonder whether the local printer had become remanufactured and was now selling and servicing office equipment, having given up the printing business! My linguist’s curiosity about weird language then made me ponder whether the shop might be selling remanufactured printers, and was also servicing office equipment of all sorts. I didn’t bother to go into the shop, reasoning that if their signwriting was so ambiguous, it might not be quite the place I wanted to do business with. Look at the different meanings you can get from this sign:

1 We have here a remanufactured person who has been in the printing business but who has now switched to selling and servicing office equipment.

2 We have someone who remanufactures printers and sells and services them – hiccup! We’re stuck with ‘of Office Equipment’ left over, so that can’t be right!

3 Perhaps they remanufacture printers and sell them. In addition, they service office equipment.

Any more ideas? To be fair, it looks as if a chunk of the sign is missing – some guesswork might provide clues as to what sort of office equipment they service – T might be the start of ‘Typewriters’, for instance. And the top line might have nothing to do with office equipment at all – it could be that the whole line once referred to remanufactured printer cartridges.

Next time I’m in Sydney, I’ll find out whether or not the signwriter has been back to repair the sign. Meanwhile, it serves to remind us to avoid ambiguity of expression and to eradicate it in the work we edit.