Punctuation matters

Let’s try and keep things clear

So Amy and I went to Scotland! It was our first trip outside Portugal since we moved to Lisbon nearly three years ago.

We spent a week in Edinburgh, a wonderful city replete with ridiculous numbers of buses, ancient buildings, and friendly people happy to chat your ear off¹. We went to Inverness, Orkney, and the Isle of Skye.

We saw countless numbers of clouds, sheep, redheads, and men in skirts. And lots of other cool stuff explained by people we couldn't always fully understand.²

These images were uploaded solely to encourage you to read this article. Did it work?

But that's not what I came to tell you about.

I’m here instead to talk about a fancy digital highway message sign that has me puzzled. I saw it in different places so I know they’re serious about the message.³ What, exactly, the message is, though, is a mystery.

The first couple of times I saw it, I couldn’t understand how it was that my mirrors would signal my manoeuvre. Or, for that matter, why I needed to remember this tidbit.⁴ I know that some cars now have additional turn signal indicators on the side mirrors for better visibility. Could that be what they were referencing? Didn’t seem likely.

Then it occurred to me that maybe they wanted me to remember my mirrors and signal my manoeuvre. That seems a bit more plausible. But there are MANY possible interpretations here. It somewhat boggles the mind.

Would it be so hard to add some punctuation?⁵ I’m not talking about anything fancy like a semi-colon. A comma or three should suffice.

This is what I was first puzzling over. It just doesn’t seem likely this is the message they were trying to convey.

Now I understand what I’m to remember. And signaling my manoeuvre seems in keeping with the general theme of safe driving, which other signs of its ilk have been promoting.⁶

Now we’re back to the whole “side view mirrors with indicator lights” bit.

This would be a list. Plausible, but it leaves open the question of what it is I’m supposed to remember.

This clarifies what I’m supposed to remember and is directive. Seems among the more likely possibilities.

If we’re willing to get a little more creative with the punctuation, how about a colon?

Ok. I know what I am to remember. Why it matters, though, is still up in the air.

Good. I like it.

Also quite nice. Probably even better as you’re given permission to actually do the manoeuvre in question.

I’m sure there are even more possibilities, which you are free to add in the comments.

None of this is, I imagine, what the sign-makers would prefer I be thinking about as I whiz down the highway in an unfamiliar rental car at 70mph⁷ after not having driven in nearly three years.

Nothing a little punctuation couldn’t clear up, though.

I’ll leave you with this because I’m quite curious.

That’s all for now.

Love from Lisbon,

Scott⁸

1. The woman I sat next to on the plane told me I might have to feign death to get out of some conversations. Particularly - apparently - in Glasgow, which was not on our agenda for this visit.

2. Feels a bit like Portugal now I think about it.

3. Though I don’t know exactly who “they” is in this context.

4. How I could remember something I didn’t actually know was also a question.

5. Maybe it would. Maybe the sign creation keyboard doesn’t actually support punctuation. That would explain some things. It also seems a plausible explanation given this:

Which, I mean, c’mon! Really?! There’s a keyboard in charge of a sign network viewed by tens of thousands of drivers and it doesn’t support punctuation?

6. Like this one:

7. On the left side of the road no less.

8. Amy wanted nothing to do with this post.