The signs were all there

[venta]

Some years ago, there was a snippet in the back of Private Eye where someone pointed out the hilarious sign on the M40 which read "Use both lanes Oxford A34".

How could one, they said (presumably with sides splitting from the laughter) use both lanes. Surely the sign should advise you to use either lane for Oxford?

Now, while acknowledging that they are technically correct, I'd driven past that sign for years without batting an eyelid. It uses short words and it's easy to understand what it intends to convey, which is pretty much the main criterion for a sensible motorway sign.

When small, I was perpetually amused by the roadworks signs which advise you "Delays possible til October". But it's July, I don't want to be stuck in a queue for three months! I do, however, concede that the sign can't really be improved on; you can't be accurate in four words or fewer. Ditto "Police Slow" signs (I'm a civilian, I can go as fast as I want!) I suppose you could stick a colon in that one, but really only the most perverse alien would genuinely misunderstand it.

Making signs say exactly what they mean would ultimately degenerate into huge hoardings containing several paragraphs of legalese; not a great idea for drivers hurtling by and trying to absorb information at 70mph.

However, every so often I do observe a sign which seems so peculiar that I want to know the backstory. If, for example you saw the following sign, do you think you'd understand it?

Passenger lifts
→

Assuming you were a passenger who wished to change floors without climbing stairs, you'd get the general idea that walking the way the little symbol-thing pointed might be a good idea?

So, I want to know what humorous misunderstandings and mishaps led to the placement of the following sign in Reading railway station:

Passenger lifts
please follow the
directional arrow.
→

Having added all those extra words, they could have added a 'For' at the front, which would have corrected the only possible ambiguity I can see in my alternative version above.

Comments

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

"Delays possible til October".

I like those signs - the idea that after October, delays will suddenly become impossible.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd never thought of it like that. I guess what we want is "Delays probable til October" :)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I think you also get signs saying: "delays likely til October", so I interpret the "possible" one as meaning somthing like: "Until October, there will be an increased probability of delays, but not so much that it would be accurate to say that delays are 'likely'".

And does "October" mean until the beginning of Oct, or until the end?

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Round here, I more usually see the "possible" before the problem, so there'll be signs that say stuff like:

"Possible Congestion Ahead till October".

This always confuses me; I wonder what impossible congestion would look like (presumably it would involve bizarre configurations of traffic that simply could not have arisen through actual driving), and I also start to think that I am in an uncollapsed quantum wave-form, with Schrodinger's congestion just down the road, about to resolve into either Actual Congestion or No Congestion At All.

I was the boy who, whenever we passed a sign saying "Free Recovery Ends" at the end of the motorway, was always disappointed that there was no little man standing by the sign to give me my promised Recovery End.

My favourite one of these -- which I saw in New Scientist's Feedback column, always a likely place -- is "All Refuse To Be Thrown In Skip Upon Leaving Plane". Apparently the reader who spotted it got a very stony-faced response when she was quite loud and assertive in expressing her refusal to be thrown in the skip.

I have only once taken personal action along the same lines, over a greengrocer's apostrophe (well, technically an optician's apostrophe) -- there was a sign saying "Required: Contact Len's Specialist". I went in and asked for Len's specialist's phone number, so I could fulfill their requirement, but they just looked at me bemusedly.

[venta.livejournal.com]

so I could fulfill their requirement

I rarely actually act on such impulses!

The toilets at work have strict signs instructing me to use the sanitary bins provided. I feel dreadfully guilty when I have nothing to put in them.

On the refuse/refuse problem: I (quite genuinely) misread a whole bunch of Oxford council's leaflets which said:

REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE

I initally parsed that as encouraging me to recycle as a means of reducing my reuse of various objects.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's ever a Possible Congestion Behind sign.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Would it be reasonable to say "Delays likelier before November"? I think that "than afterwards" is reasonably implicit, and if the month has been selected with skill so that the road works will have been removed by that point, it might even be accurate.