A Picture is Not Always Worth A Thousand Words by Nancy L. Eady

 I spent decades of my education learning to read—first picture books, then chapter books, then young adult fiction, then regular fiction and non-fiction, then legal cases. I sometimes think maybe I should have stopped at fiction and non-fiction; there’s nothing worse than trying to read long legal opinions when you are having an afternoon slump. After page twenty, I’m not sure if I’m reading words, or counting sheep. By page fifty, I begin to nod off, which I don’t recommend as a savvy career move. 

But I digress. (I tend to do so.) With all the time and effort I have put into learning to read, nothing is so irritating as opening a box of equipment or furniture requiring assembly, and finding the instructions explained with pictures only. A picture of a screw with a twisty arrow on top of it may seem self-explanatory, but for someone who constantly argues with herself about the meaning of “righty tighty, lefty loosy,” such instructions are fraught with peril. I will always talk myself out of one meaning (the twisty arrow means I turn the screw clockwise) into the opposite (no, the twisty arrow means I turn the screw counterclockwise.) And no matter which meanings I flutter back and forth between, the one I finally choose will be wrong. Worse, the error will not become obvious until twelve steps later, when I get to exercise a part of my vocabulary that most people aren’t aware I possess. 

If the sentence is written out—insert screw 20 into hole 12 and screw it in counter-clockwise—I’ve got it. No need to debate or ponder, just instructions to follow. 

We bought a flat screen TV a few years ago. It came with a stand that had to be installed before you could set up the TV. The directions were pictorial only. I have a law degree and my husband a master’s in human resources, and the TV stand still almost defeated us. After two hours of effort, it was our tenth-grade daughter’s suggestion that provided the final piece necessary to get the TV mounted on the stand correctly. And while I tend to be inept with mechanical things, my husband and my daughter both are skilled with them. 

There is an increasing tendency to use pictures and icons in warning and clothing labels as well. Even I can figure out that a skull and crossbones means that whatever is in the bottle so labeled probably shouldn’t be part of my dinner, but other warning labels are more esoteric. The hardest warning labels to decipher involve a stick figure doing something with a red X over it. The red X I understand but figuring out whether the stick figure is walking up a ramp, punching someone else, tap-dancing on the forklift prongs or doing the hokey pokey can be difficult. 

And with clothes, deciding which symbol means wash in hot water, which means wash in warm water, and which means cold water only still defeats me. Let’s just say those symbols aren’t intuitively obvious to the casual observer. 

The only time I ever found a pictorial sign more helpful than a written sign was when our daughter first came to live with us. The social worker who came to inspect our house informed us that the next time she came to visit, we needed to have a fire escape plan posted. She came back to a sign in front of our daughter’s room showing flames and an arrow pointing toward the front door. She wanted to argue that the sign was inadequate, until my husband pointed out that our daughter was three, couldn’t read, and that sign was all she could understand. Our daughter helped us out, too; the social worker asked her what she should do if there was a fire. Kayla announced she should run outside, go next door, and call 911. The social worker was sufficiently impressed to move on to other matters. It’s a good thing she wasn’t around an hour later, when Kayla said thoughtfully, “The only thing is, where is next door?”  

As writers, we draw pictures with our words for the canvas of our reader’s minds. These word pictures evoke not only landscapes but emotions and memories as well. Because of our words, readers are transported from their current world to the world we create for them, and they go gladly. I don’t think the increase in pictorial instructions and warnings can threaten that, and I’m glad. There’s nothing better than being lost in a good book—and I defy any picture sign to lead me out again before I’m ready.