Re: lack of a common visual vocabulary

Grumpy old men can remember the time when confusion also reigned over  
something that several people will either have forgotten or never  
seen, even in this café: milk bottle tops (metallic foil seals,  
colour-coded for the milk’s fat content)

& even when milk migrated from glass bottles to plastic or paper  
cartons, there was no standard colour code until fairly recently

some suppliers (e.g. the Tesco supermarket chain) used green for half- 
fat (halbfett) and competitors (e.g. Sainsburys) used red; other  
suppliers used green for skimmed and red for maigre; but Boots’ full  
milk container had a red top; blue or sometimes silver usually meant  
fett, or ‘full’, or ‘whole’

the one reliable marker was gold top, for Jersey milk, extra-creamy,  
now sometimes marketed as breakfast milk or even ‘weekend’ milk

now we all know that blue = full, green = half-ish, red = low

don't we?

Paul

On 3 Feb 2009, at 10:39, Rob Waller wrote:

> Other areas of everyday life where a grammar is required:
> - digital clocks. Moving to summer time is great feat of memory,  
> manual dexterity, deduction and luck, and my oven clock is only  
> correct six months of the year.
> - car radios: every car seems to have a different set of  
> abbreviations: PTY, AST, TP, TA, etc. But only rarely On and Off.
>
> In fact any radio is more complicated than the ones we used to  
> have. Not able to receive steam radio in the basement kitchen of  
> our new home, I've just ordered an internet radio. I'll need to  
> tune it, so I think I won't make any plans for the weekend.
>
> Rob,
> Grumpy Old Man Department
>
> __________________________________
>
> Rob Waller
>
> Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
> University of Reading
>
>
>
> On 2 Feb 2009, at 18:46, Conrad Taylor wrote:
>
>> This evening, I am recharging my batteries.  No, that is not
>> a metaphor.  I have a bunch of Li-ion and NiMH rechargeable
>> batteries.  In anticipation of an expedition into Wessex,
>> I am recharging them.
>>
>> The dedicated Li-ion batteries for the Nikon D-200 SLR and the
>> Panasonic NV-GS320 DV-cam.  And the AA and AAA "Hybrio" NiMH
>> cells that I use for my digital audio recorders, flashgun and
>> LED torch (I have two chargers for such batteries).
>>
>> One of the chargers has a green LED that stays on until the
>> batteries are charged, then it goes out.  One has an orange
>> LED that flashes until the batteries are charges, then it
>> stops flashing.  One has a light that simply stays on all
>> the time to show the batteries are connected to the circuit,
>> and you have to guess whether the batteries have been charged
>> or not.  One charger has a light that starts out one colour,
>> and then changes to another colour when the battery is charged.
>>
>> "Why oh why oh why oh why..."  can't we have some kind of
>> visual vocabulary standardisation in this area? (!*@?)
>>
>> Conrad
>>
>> (Who, mounted on a charger, fears a charge of hungry Li-ions)
>> -- 
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