RE: Deprecated - is it a word?

["Joe Malin" <jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com>]

Uh, was the person who said that an American?

As I wrote in another e-mail, it means to disparage or belittle. In
software circles, it means to retire, make obsolete, or supersede in
favor of something else. In HTML 4.0, for instance, I can say that the
<FONT> tag has been deprecated; you should use CSS styles instead.

I can not tell you that you should or should not use it. Instead, I
suggest you review the documentation of your competitors and other
vendors in your field. If they use deprecate, you should too.

I have to say that I don't often hear the word used in speech in the US,
but I think that US speech even in technical circles is much less formal
and literary than technical UK speech, based on my limited experience.

Also, someone wrote in to say that "deprecate" and "depreciate" are
often confused. They are not synonymous (and synonymous is a misnomer!).
"Depreciate" is "to lower in estimation or esteem 2 a : to lower the
price or estimated value of *depreciate property*". In common use,
depreciate is less perjorative than deprecate. However, depreciate is
mostly used (in the US) for the second definition, to lower the price of
property.

So if you tell an acccountant that a Java class has been depreciated,
she's gonna be a bit confused!


	 Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com 
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.	

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of John Cornellier
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 6:53 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Deprecated - is it a word?

Hi, I'm in the UK, and I was about to write in some release notes that a
given feature was "deprecated". Someone said  "Americans don't use this
word". Can any of you left-ponders confirm or deny this, and if the
former, what is the alternative? I'm sceptical as it gets 21 million
returns in Google and has a lengthy entry in Wikipedia.
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