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> they use double quotes around _dangerous voltage_. Since those
> two words are not a quote and not a special use of a technical
> term the quotes indicate to me irony as if it is not really
> "dangerous". Shouldn't the double quotes be deleted?
If this were prose, absolutely.
> I've searched the Internet but cannot find any published standard
> or requirement for this particular text blob. The text is quoted
> below:
>
> > The lightning flash with the arrowhead symbol, within an
> > equilateral triangle, is intended to alert the user to the
> > presence of uninsulated "dangerous voltage" within the product's
> > enclosure that may be of sufficient magnitude to constitute a
> > risk of electric shock to persons.
Although you may not be able to FIND the published standard,
it's safe to infer that there IS one: A web search for
"lightning flash with the arrowhead"
will find many thousands of copies of that exact text block,
including the double quotes.
I suppose you could try contacting UL, CE, ISO, or TUV if you
care strongly about identifying the source of the text. If it
were me, though, I probably wouldn't bother. It's clearly a
standard warning, so any attempt to "clean it up" is likely to
raise your company's exposure to liability.
> P.S. I also feel that "...constitute a risk of electric shock to
> persons." is superfluous and should just be "...constitute a risk
> of electric shock."
I agree with you on that, too, and while you were rewriting the
thing, you could also replace "is intended toalert the user to"
with "indicates"... But since it's obviously a standard bit of
text that was laboriously crafted by a committee of lawyers,
it's dangerous to assume that you can change ANY of it without
negative legal consequences.
If the phrasing of the warning is keeping you up at night, you
could ask your company's lawyer whether it'd be ok to modify
it... But you already know what he'll say, right?
-Andrew
=== Andrew Warren - awarren -at- synaptics -dot- com
=== Synaptics, Inc - Santa Clara, CA
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