IT Grammerr.....uhhhh, Grammar

[wlfpackr]

I've never seen this written in stone (or 0's and 1's)anywhere, so I figured I'd ask here. Do you ever wonder sometimes if you're using the correct grammar when speaking/writing about IT subject matter?

For example:
mouses or mice? (meese, meeses?)
Blackberrys or Blackberries?
IT or I.T.?
logon or log on?
username or user name?

There are tons of others out there.



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There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that do not.

 

[RiverGuy]

I worry about it every now and then when I'm writing software, and the term is to appear in the software itself. Once, a few years ago, I was tasked with writing an application which controlled the locking and unlocking of a turnstile. I ended up having a brain lapse and spelled turnstile with a y instead of an i. So, the project and the executable and even some of the code was written with the main theme spelled incorrectly. I cringed every time I had to troubleshoot the app and click on that executable with the incorrect spelling.

 

[dialtonebone]

username
logon (Preferably "login")
I.T.
Mice
Blackberrys <<plural with a standard S added to the add since it is a trademark

 

[CajunCenturion]

You might want to take a look at forum1256 here on Tek-Tips.

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[wlfpackr]

I worry about it every now and then when I'm writing software, and the term is to appear in the software itself. Once, a few years ago, I was tasked with writing an application which controlled the locking and unlocking of a turnstile. I ended up having a brain lapse and spelled turnstile with a y instead of an i. So, the project and the executable and even some of the code was written with the main theme spelled incorrectly. I cringed every time I had to troubleshoot the app and click on that executable with the incorrect spelling.

I once had one of my guys create an automated install for an in-house application. One of the items it would do is if you received an install error it would tell the user to contact the I.T. dept of another company under the same conglomerate we're under. The initials we always used to refer to this other company were "S.H.". Well needless to say if you received an error it would say something like, "Please contact the S.H. IT dept and reference error code: #####"

Luckily our executive staff has a good sense of humor and we all got a good chuckle out of it before making the change.



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There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that do not.

 

[Opieo]

The Making an Impression forum is quite fun.
I like it there.
I keep tabs on this forum though too as it offered me knowledge I would not have otherwise attained.

~
Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding.

 

[Dollie]

We were just having the blackberrys/blackberries discussion last week. I think it should be 'ys' not 'ies', and not "y's" because that makes it possessive.

But I could be wrong because I often am.

 

[rosieb]

There's often no absolutely correct answer; so pick an answer, research it (ie make sure it's not really wrong), then stick with it - consistency is vital.

I.T. may, technically, be more correct than IT - but which is more readable? I'd go for IT. But always be consistant, both for individual terms and for general style.

Rosie
"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." Richard Feynman

 

[Welshbird]

MAy favourite ever was a large button that appeared in the software I was testing, with the legend 'UPDATION'.

It really should be a word, but it really isn't!

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

 

[lionelhill]

I really like updation.

Seriously, some of the differences are incredibly subtle but very significant.

This is one I got recently (error messages changed to protect the innocent):

"Bleurgware 4.2 has created error 03BBFh
Please, close Bleurgmachine and use the reconfigure utility"

For non-UK-English speakers, here are translations of this error into plain UK English, with and without the comma after "please":

Without comma: "Unfortunately we at Bleurgsoft made a boo-boo, and as a result all your hard work is about to evaporate (we hope you saved it recently? Made a back-up?). It will work again if you close our slightly-faulty software and correct things using the other slightly-faulty software we supplied on the same disk"

With comma: "Something's gone wrong. For crying out loud, how stupid can you get? And yes, we at Bleurgsoft mean you, not us. Just flippin' close this software like you ought to know how and run the bleedin' configuration program that we gave you. Do we have to spell it out? Good Heavens, this really ought to be obvious! Strewth...."

 

[Stella740pl]

lionelhill,
English is not my native language, but I have been living in USA for over 13 years. I thought my English was not bad.
But I had no idea that comma (or its absence) after "please" would make a difference THAT big. Hm. I learned something new today.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I'm with you Stella. Perhaps with the right verbal intonation you can get the second meaning, but I submit that it's the intonation the drives the meaning, not the comma. With the written word, I don't think that particular comma makes much difference at all.


--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read
FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[lionelhill]

I do apologise, having spent some weeks with the Bleurgsoft-that-shall-remain-nameless problem, I wasn't feeling very charitable towards their programers. And it made me oversensitive to punctuation. A bad sign.

Cajun is, as usual, absolutely right; intonation is everything. For me, that little comma inserted enough pause between the "please" and the rest, to express a little exasperation (the difference between the pause-free "Please sit down" and pausing "PLEASE, WILL you sit down?" to an over-excited toddler).