It was during a google search (other search engine are available!) that I landed on the following page on Lovemoney.com: How to rent out your home.

I was struck by the seventh paragraph, which reads:

“After all, over the long-term, property has proved a good investment. Sitting tight and seeing out this current dip in the market by letting your home could prove very Foolish indeed.”

I have emphasised the word foolish above, as it caused me some confusion. I read this to mean that letting out your home was a bad idea. After all the dictionary definition for foolish is:

1. resulting from or showing a lack of sense; ill-considered; unwise: a foolish action, a foolish speech.
2. lacking forethought or caution.
3. trifling, insignificant, or paltry.

However, this sentence didn’t seem to make sense when read within the meaning of the whole article.

After double checking and re-reading the content it appears that lovemoney.com is actually produced by fool.co.uk, which is a well known web site offering financial/money advice.  It appears that within this context the term ‘Foolish’ actually means a good thing. Fool.co.uk have ‘branded’ the word foolish to mean the opposite of what it actually means!

There are two lessons to be learned from this: Don’t use branding when plain English will do and know where all your content is going to be published. Context in this situation is very important, as much as I wouldn’t have suggested they use this term on fool.co.uk it would probably make more sense than it does on lovemoney.com.

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