We’ve come a long way in computing from the days of DOS. Gone are the days of cd-backslashes and command line interfaces. Yet we, as an industry, still choose to confound at the worst possible time. That time is when things go wrong. Have a peek at this:
That’s Microsoft Outlook on my Mac. This means something to my buddy Ivor, who translates errors into English for a living. But if you’re without an Ivor you’re pretty much fucked. And sometimes Ivors are busy. You can start Googling, or you can do what I did. Which was to try again in a few minutes. That cleared everything up. Here’s how I’d write the error:
Error: 655329
Something has gone wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
That would work for both me and Ivor. It’s English, so I can read it, but there’s also a cryptic error code for Ivor to run through his computer-brain if it’s something that doesn’t clear up on it’s own.