Human resources

L’avertissement écrit sits at a fixed step of the disciplinary ladder, and an English reader has to fight off a near-twin to read it. « Advertisement » is the word the eye reaches for, and un avertissement is a warning: a dated, filed, formal caution that something has to stop. The two have drifted so far apart that no context rescues them. Avertir quelqu’un is to warn somebody, sans avertissement is without warning, and even the short note a publisher puts at the front of a book is un avertissement, a notice to the reader. Nothing anywhere in that range is being sold. What English calls an advertisement turns up in this very list under another name: it is l’annonce, the posting that carries la fourchette salariale, or la publicité when what is being pushed is a product. The trap works in the other direction too, and that is the expensive one. A French manager who says je vous avertis is not offering you a helpful heads-up; the file has just grown a page.