These examples of how bad writing has caused serious miscommunication were posted on a plain language listserv we subscribe to, and we thought you’d be interested.

1. Computer manufacturer Coleco lost $35 million in a single quarter in 1983–and eventually went out of business–when customers purchased its new Adam line of computers, found the instruction manuals unreadable and rushed to return their computers.
2. An oil company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a new pesticide, only to discover the formula had already been worked out five years earlier by one of the same company’s technicians. He wrote his report so poorly that no one had finished reading it.
3. A nuclear plant supervisor ordered “ten foot long lengths” of radioactive material. Instead of getting the ten-foot long lengths it needed, the plant received ten one-foot lengths, at a cost so great it was later classified.

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