Abstract
Some instructions for a coffee mill fail to take the reader's common sense seriously and so violate some basic rules for communication, called speech act rule. When the instructions violate the rules, the reader either gets confused or feels justified to stop reading. By writing the instructions this way, the company tried to protect itself from lawsuits. It is shown that these instructions do nothing about liability. The better, less expensive, and only way to write instructions is to respect the reader's common sense.