A survey for foreigners on building color guideline for London

Question

HelloI have a question of how to write a title of a survey, that foreigners will be asked to fill in."A survey for foreigners on building color guideline research & development for London"Is this correct?"a survey for foreigners" to express that a survey is to be filled in by foreigners.Or may it sound like "a survey is about foreigners"?Thanks for your help.

Khoff · Accepted Answer

The whole sentence is very confusing. Is it a survery about how to "build" research and development guidelines about color? Color of what? Or is it a survey about the research and development of guidelines for the color of buildings? It's fairly clear that foreigners are supposed to be taking the survey, but who is going to build the color guideline research, or research the building colors, or whatever is meant?

Also, "foreigners" sounds rather unfriendly. Are you talking about immigrants? Tourists? Foreign workers?

It's a peculiar characteristic of English that so many words can function as nouns, verb, or even adjectives. This leads to a great possibility of ambiguity, expecially in the truncated style used in headlines, captions, title, etc.

Zazzex · Answer

Any type of foreigners I guess: foreign workers, tourists, immigrants, etc.

The research is to find what color foreigners think suits the environment, I guess.

The survey will be conducted by a research group, and who will use it is not yet decided.

Should I say maybe "A survey for foreigners for the sake of R&D for color guideline for London"?

Nona the brit · Answer

I'm finding the heading, and thus the purpose, of this survey confusing. If you don't know what the survey is about yourself or its purpose, how can you describe it in a title? Can you ask for more information before you do this?

Colour of what (and if you are conducting this survey in London use the British English spelling)? Colour of buildings in London? What colour 'guidelines' - is this survey creating advice for architects so they can create designs that will appeal to 'foreigners'. Is it to create advice for owners of tourist attractions so they can make themselves more attractive for overseas visitors?

foreigners - still not clear who that is really. You have to define your target group - 'foreigners' is far too vague. For non-residents of England? For non-British citizens whether they live in the UK or not? Immigrants - just those who have retained their original nationality or would you include those who have taken British citizenship? Do you wish to exclude those who have taken British citizenship or are they still 'foreigners' for the purpose of this survey? Do you mean people visiting London on holiday?

A survey for foreigners on building color guideline for London

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