Muddling through instruction manuals

APPARENTLY, almost 50% of Brits don't know how to use their home appliances. OK... how long have you got?

- JUDI SPIERS

Regular readers of this column will be well aware of my fear and dis-like of technology. Well, actually, that's not quite true. What I dislike is how complicated they've made eve-rything. The paperwork/booklets and websites you have to go on in order to understand how to work your latest appliance.

Did you know 163 countries have organised themselves in the ISO, the International Organisation for Stand-ardisation, where you can find the International Electrotechnical Com-mission, which has set up a standard on how to create manuals and which language you should include? Due to our global economy, they have now included instructions written in Cyrillic, Arabic and Hanzi. So that's why what used to be a fairly reasona-ble-sized leaflet has turned into something that takes as much space on my bookshelf as my Lord of the Rings trilogy!