English as She is Spoke.

I elected to replace the DVD drive on the new computer with a conventional hard disk as I felt the need for more storage. With that in mind, I purchased an external DVD drive for the odd occasion that I might need one. The box was printed with the instruction manual which included these safety notes. While I understand the meaning of each and every word, the various combinations are a little beyond me. I often rail at some of the bad instructions written by English speakers such as the ubiquitous, “Do not use the contents if the seal has been broken!?!”
 
English instructions written by non-native English speakers come into a different category. MY father, who wrote the maintenance manuals for aircraft such as the Concorde and the Britannia, would be turning in his grave had we not cremated him. The cost of employing people who can write accurate, comprehensible instructions in English, or any other language, is trivial, which ever country on this earth you inhabit. Today’s title was originally that of a Portuguese-English phrase book that was picked up by humourist, James Thurber, he was particularly attracted to a sentence translated as “My postilion has been struck by lightning.” Obviously a fact that every tourist needs to communicate.