I saw this at the beginning of a television program a few days ago.

Problem:
A comma is missing.

Explanation:
The TV program on truTV was titled “World’s Wildest Police Videos”.

The complete warning appeared in all-capital letters at the beginning of the program: “DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.”

A line break appeared after the word “NATURE”, and another line break appeared after the word “VIEWER”, so the warning was formatted as follows:

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER
DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

My first reaction to this warning was, “What is a PROGRAM VIEWER?”

Some sign and warning writers mistakenly claim that they can insert line breaks where commas should occur and therefore that a comma is unnecessary with these implied-comma line breaks.

If the warning writer for “World’s Wildest Police Videos” had followed that rule, then he or she would have created a warning that would have been formatted with a line break between “PROGRAM” and “VIEWER”:

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
OF THIS PROGRAM
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

But whoever entered the text for the warning screen could not even claim that he or she was using an implied comma between the word “PROGRAM” and the word “VIEWER”.

I believe that the warning writer was unaware of a basic principle about commas, which is that they indicate pauses. I otherwise could not explain how the writer could have read the warning aloud and not noticed that a comma was missing after the word “PROGRAM”.

Solution:
“Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer …”