Markup View

Author: Bisected8

Aug 25th 2013 at 4:33:59 PM

I would argue that while it could, it should be obvious to most people what it's about, and for the few that it isn't, they'll be able to work it out. Plenty of titles rely on the assumption that the reader can infer what they mean after all.

Furthermore, I fourth OffDutyTeacher for the following reasons;

# The literal interpretation of the title covers the "teacher having a life outside teaching" part.
# The only people who would recognise a teacher as being "off duty" are their students (even said students' parents wouldn't have any trouble getting their head around the idea that a teacher has a life outside their job). Thus that part is very easily inferred.
# For most people the idea of a student realising their teacher exists outside of school is what would come to mind for precisely the same reason this trope exists; it's TruthInTelevision and it's what comes to mind when an "off duty" teacher is brought up.
# Even if some literally minded person doesn't understand it, there's not really much scope for them to misuse it; The few works which focus on teachers lives outside of school will almost inevitably have this trope anyway.

As long as the majority of readers can work it out (and for the reasons above, I think they can) there won't be a problem. ViewersAreMorons is as bad an idea here as anywhere else, after all.