On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 12:01:05 -0700 (PDT), Robert Macy
wrote:

On Jun 20, 10:54*am, Doug Miller
wrote:
jamesgang wrote :

Yes, we all agree, what he wants makes no sense. *But what he
wants is for the light to be off when ALL the switches are down.

That's not difficult. All he needs to do is flip all the switches down, and then look at the light:
-- if the light is off, he's finished.
-- if the light is on, remove a faceplace and turn any one of the four switches upside down.

Again, I understand your lack of sympathy. When there's a single
switch in the panel at the ends of a hall; UP/DOWN makes NO
difference. However, I've got over 20 light panels containing racks of
up to 5 switches per panel! As I said, if light switches can be made
to be all down when off; it's easy to tell which light switch
activated the light. But, when you have a rack of switches in arbitray
positions and all your lights are out but one...

Quoting from one of my replies to another:
"From all the replies there's not been much sympathy for the
confusion
3,4,5-way switches can cause. I agree, if there's a single switch
controlling the light set, not a biggie, don't care about up or down
position, but when you have light switch panels containing 4 and
sometimes 5 switches it can be a bit daunting when you're half
asleep. and don't want to exercise every frigging light in the room
trying to find the right one."

And again, turning a switch over is not a viable option. The wiring is
often too short, the boxes are FILLED with wiring, and the wiring
itself is NOT very flexible. This may have been 12 Awg wiring, will
have to check. So turning a switch over puts the GND wire at the top
and distorts everything so much that the switch never lies flat again
and cosmetically looks terrible after the cover plate is replaced.

You can accomplish the same thing Doug suggests by swapping the
travelers at one switch. A 3-way switch will have one screw that has
a different marking than the other two. Swap the two wires on the
terminals that have the same markings.