Re: Re[2]: Speaking of Improper Terminology

[Nora Merhar <nmerhar -at- CHARLESINDUSTRIES -dot- COM>]

OK. What about master/servant? Would that describe essentially the
same relationship? Or refer to the "master" drive as the "alpha"
drive?

And what's wrong with abort? It's a perfectly good word. Of course, I
have no problem with Kill either--you're not actually destroying a
living being, just a process.

I genuinely don't see how these terms can be offensive to anyone when
used in the context of software or other technical writing. I ALSO
think that as writers, we may be significantly more sensitive to how
words are used than many of our users are.

Case in point--at my last job, where I wrote documentation for
switching systems, we had a report system that provided data about how
the system was doing. Many of the reports contained cumulative data.
Since the report columns could contain 3-4 characters per line, some
of those headers looked like the following:

CUM
# OF
CALLS
RCV

Unfortunate, but no-one seemed to notice or care except the writers. A
perfect example, I think, of seeing words in context.

Nora
nmerhar -at- charlesindustries -dot- com

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