Have you ever felt the need to create a new word? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Surag R wondered: <<In one of my projects, there was a term "statused" 
in the UI. I told the project manager that there is no term like 
statused. He said, the software product has a history of around 15 
years and no user had complained about it till now and let us continue 
using it.>>

That's a really tough call. Once something has established a 15-year 
track record, it's awfully hard to change it, and doing so risks 
causing a surprising amount of disruption. Microsoft, for example, just 
about caused apoplexy in the editing community when they revised Word's 
revision tracking features to produce the botch job that was Word XP; 
even today, in Word 2003, the editing features are still badly damaged 
compared to their pre-XP implementation.

That example providing the cautionary tale, the solution is to obtain a 
reality check on the manager's statement. For example, talk to your 
technical support people. If they report dozens of calls per day about 
users confused over "statused", then you've got a problem you can fix. 
If nobody has ever expressed confusion over this term, odds are good 
that it's become part of the working vocabulary of the audience--or at 
least that it makes no less sense to them than the icons used in the 
software. Talking to users of the product provides even better evidence 
for change vs preserving the status quo, but not everyone is allowed to 
do this.

<<There are a lot of wrong grammatical usages and misspellings around 
us through advertisements and other channels. Can this type of software 
UI errors too be accepted like that? Or shall we classify it as the 
invention of a new word according to convenience?>>

English has always changed in ways that word geeks like us don't like, 
and will continue to do so. Our job is not to be blind and dogmatic 
about traditional usage--otherwise we'd all be writing in Elizabethan 
English--but rather to cling tenaciously to the old for as long as 
doing so makes sense. When the language has changed, we must accept 
that and move on. Or as one of my favorite aphorisms goes: “In words, 
as fashions, the same rule will hold,//Alike fantastic if too new or 
old://Be not the first by whom the new are tried,//Nor yet the last to 
lay the old aside.”--Alexander Pope

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy.  Watch the demo at http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.