Nutzen

I wanted to buy some printer ink cartridges for our two HP printers but didn't remember what numbers to get, so I had a look at HP's web site.

The international one was slightly confusing since the same printer uses differently-numbered cartridges depending on the zone, so I also checked the German site.

It didn't even recognise Stella's printer, but did recognise mine.

What I found amusing was that several of the cartridges came in two kinds of packaging: one cartridge per pack and two cartridges per pack, marked, respectively, Standard and Nutzen.

"Nutzen"—hee. Presumably a translation of the marketing-ese "value", as in "you get more bang for your buck". I wonder whether the translator really didn't understand what "value" meant in that context, or whether he couldn't think of a more decent German rendering. (How about "Preisvorteil" or "Günstiger" or "Sie sparen ...%"?)

The Colour of Paper

I wanted to buy some printer paper today.

They had the sort that I liked (it's heavier than usual, at 100 g/m² vs. the more usual 80 g/m², for one thing), but all the packets on display were opened at one end.

I asked one of the employees whether they had any unopened ones, and he said he was afraid not. He also said that those packets are typically opened by people who want to be sure that the paper inside is not blue (the predominant colour on the packaging) but were indeed white. Whatever.