Mind your language | 3 April 2004

The Metropolitan Police have put up big posters on the Underground telling people what to do if they see a bag without an owner. ‘Don’t touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999,’ it says. You might think that I am being captious in thinking this reads badly. If the word don’t governs all the subsequent imperatives, then the doubting passenger ends up doing nothing. The ambiguity is not helped by the conjunction or. The Met’s message in conventional prose would have the first two words as a separate sentence: ‘Don’t touch. Check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999.’ (I don’t much care for the Americanism call. If someone says ‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ I sometimes think they intend to come round to the house. The English is phone. But never mind.) The advertising people went against fashion in putting all those clauses in one sentence, when the tendency is the opposite.