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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Warning: Contains Milk

We read that with raised eyebrows this morning while eating breakfast in the LHR Hilton? Where was that warning sign? On a pat of butter.

Who would be the target audience for such a message? First, it's obviously somebody who reads English. Second, it's clearly for somebody who has concerns either about dairy allergies or about consuming dairy products. Its target audience seems therefore to be literate individuals who are concerned for some reason whether or not food contains milk but are unaware that butter contains milk.

Maybe we were missing something. Aha, this article explains it.

2 comments:

Dennis Warner said...

Here are some other product warnings to ponder:

http://www.rinkworks.com/said/warnings.shtml

Kathy and Brian said...

Thanks for that link. Some of the factual (and completely self evident) warnings are more amusing (or do we mean appalling?) than the strange ones obviously written by non-native speakers of English.