Yesterday, I woke up with a blinding headache due to an oncoming cold. I went to my medicine cabinet, pulled out a bottle of analgesic, and found I couldn’t remember Ibuprofen from Acetaminophen, and therefore couldn’t tell whether I was supposed to take one or two.

Scrutinizing the bottle more closely through the throbbing pain, I found myself faced with a solid block of fine print. I knew the information I wanted was in there somewhere, but where?

Eventually, I did find what I was looking for, but it got me to thinking. What happens if you are having trouble thinking? What happens if your English is poor? God forbid, what happens if you can’t read?

In another industry, at the command of government, summary information has been required for some time now. That industry is the credit industry. To sign up for a credit card or take out a loan, you will receive, in addition to all of the fine-print terms and conditions, a section in the documentation that clearly spells out the interest rate and other useful terms.

So I thought, why shouldn’t this be done to over the counter medications? A very simple label on a bottle of acetomenaphen would do a great deal of good. It would have the numeral 1, a picture of a tablet, a slash, and “4-6h ” to indicate 1 tablet every four to six hours. It would make life a lot easier.