Grammar Moses: When instructions are more funny than helpful

Mine was the kind of dad who took whatever it was out of the box, cast aside the instruction manual and built it the way it should be built, no matter what "it" was.

At least that's how I remember growing up. And I never suffered a debilitating injury from a pedal falling off a bicycle, so his instincts were good.

I've always had a fondness for instruction manuals. I'm a demon with an IKEA kit, and that might be because the Swedish company uses only drawings and numbers to show you how to put their stuff together.

The best instructions, from a pure comedic standpoint, come from other overseas manufacturers.

Trey Higgens of Palatine bought some grill mats. The packaging did not indicate a country of origin, but it's pretty safe to assume it was not from this one.

"I thought you would like to see this information sheet that came with our new grilling accessory," he wrote. "'Keep you or over clean.' It also says, 'Easy to clean dishwasher safe.' I assume that is an appliance for securing valuable plates and cutlery.'"

Thanks for the note, Trey.

I thought "Kitchen home," as shown in the photograph, was a bit of a puzzlement, too But as to Trey's point regarding "Easy to clean dishwasher safe," I have a couple of thoughts.

We all know what the marketing department from wherever intended to say with that phrase, of course. But to make it say what Trey came up with, you'd need to hyphenate easy-to-clean to convert those words into a compound modifier that describes a dishwasher safe.

A simple comma after "clean" would have fixed everything.

I am unsure what "Keep you or over clean" was meant to convey, but I'm guessing it should have been "Keep you and your oven clean."

Do you have any examples of grammatical or spelling errors in instruction manuals that caused you to giggle? Send me photos!

Congregating, maybe?

While my wife, niece and pal Elmer were waiting for the Fourth of July fireworks to begin, an amateur photographer who was scouting shooting locations visited my group.

He was a chatty guy who was eager to show off some of the photos he'd shot at the festival and elsewhere.

At one point, the subject of photographing eagles came up. He told us he once saw 150 eagles - cue the sound of a record scratch - "conjugating" near the Mississippi River.

All I could envision was scores of cartoon eagles screeching as one: "Fly, flew, have flown!"

Keep up appearances

Connie Arkus of Schaumburg a while ago wrote me to take issue with the word "appearing" appearing in a sports story when it shouldn't have been there.

"I still think that when you use the word 'appear,' it means that person was visible," she wrote. "Your story read 'Cutler, appearing Friday afternoon on the Waddle and Silvey Show on ESPN ...' I happened to tune in to the interview. Now, I could be wrong, but I believe Cutler called in from Nashville. To say 'appearing' is misleading. He wasn't there in the studio."

Connie is correct. It was a poor word choice. To appear requires that you are visible. If Cutler had Skyped the radio show, he would have appeared on the show - at least to Waddle and Silvey.

In this case and, some would argue, in many cases, Cutler just phoned it in.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.