Not to be ignored

Colons, that is.

Colons have a number of uses, but in warnings or notices, they separate the introductory word from the information the notice provides.  Like this:

Warning: Failure to use colons may result in embarassment.

For example: 

Those stainless steel pans certainly are important. 

Now I will say that while the colon would make this more clear (noting that there is something important about the stainless steel pans), generally what follows the colon in cases of introduction like this should be clearly important.  An even better solution would be a reworded headline such as Important Stainless Steel Pan Information.

Then there's this one:

How many ladder emergencies have you had recently?  A colon after LADDER would clear this right up.

The sign writer could also have reworded this one to LADDER FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY, but the colon is a whole lot shorter and would have required no further repositioning of words.