diff --git a/sh/colors b/sh/colors
index 1ad11f4..6d2f193 100755
--- a/sh/colors
+++ b/sh/colors
@@ -4,11 +4,11 @@
 colors() { ### @-
     ### display all combinations of foreground and background terminal colors.
     ### this only includes the basic 16-color palette.
-    ### excluding boilerplate, this script is a mere 76 characters long!
+    ### excluding boilerplate, this script is a mere 74 characters long!
     ###
-    ### ![terminal colors](https://eaguru.guru/t/terminal-colors.png)
-    [ $# -eq 0 ] || { printf "%s\n" "$0: does not take arguments" >&2; return 1; }
-    printf "\e[%dm$(printf " \e[%dm mV \e[40m" {4,10}{0..7})\e[0m\n" {3,9}{0..7}
+    ### ![terminal colors](https://eaguru.guru/t/terminal-colors-2024.png)
+    [ $# -eq 0 ] || { printf >&2 '%s: does not take arguments\n' colors; return 64 ;}
+    printf "\e[%dm`printf " \e[%dm mV \e[40m" {4,10}{0..7}`\e[m\n" {3,9}{0..7}
 }
 
 [ -n "${preload+-}" ] || colors "$@"