While reading and annotating “See Through Words” by Michael Erard, many things came to mind. It was never really apparent to me that there was such a thing as designing metaphors. Metaphors have always just been around in this time period so I thought they happened by accident. Erard mentioned mentioned how he considers the process of creating metaphors as the creation of pseudo-mistakes, in other words “fake mistakes”. In a way, this makes sense since metaphors occur when you take words or ideas and give them a new meaning. 

Another place I questioned when reading Erard’s work was when he used the metaphor of “a paintbrush is a kind of pump,” I was lost when it came to grasping the meaning behind this. With talking to classmates, it was easier to understand the connection between a paintbrush and a pump, paint flows through a paintbrush and water or other fluid flows through a pump. Now that I was able to pull a connection, I still don’t necessarily like this metaphor, but that’s just my opinion. It does make sense with proper connotation, but it doesn’t flow as well as other, more common metaphors. 

Erard’s use of building his wedding invite around the idea of a labyrinth was a better use of a metaphor. He didn’t need to say that he made it complex and interesting, just simply using an idea most people would be familiar with in order to connect to the reader.