Re: I need help with Functionality versus Function

[Lisa Higgins <lisarea -at- LUCENT -dot- COM>]

So then, Doug Parr is all like:

> Oh, oh, Vickie. Sounds like you have a pointy-haired boss. Check out a good
> dictionary, which is to say a prescriptive, rather than descriptive,
> dictionary.
>
> A prescriptive dictionary (like American Heritage) prescribes how to use
> words correctly. It's a writer's best friend. A descriptive dictionary (Like
> Webster's Collegiate) describes how professors, louts, and barbarians use
> words, with no judgment of correct or incorrect usage. It has little use for
> someone who wants to write correctly.

Better yet, find one of those prescriptivist dictionaries that
proscribes any words or usages more recent than, say, the Battle of
Hastings. That way, you know you won't be offending those
blue-bellied Picts. They're pretty bitter about the whole thing
still, and I hear tell that they have pointed sticks! Might I
recommend a suitable Compendium of Hard Words, Illustrated and
Described, for the Benefit of Ladies and the Feeble-Minded?

While it's all well and good (well, OK, it's not really, but it's a
matter of personal preference that you are welcome to) to appoint
oneself the Protector of the Language, it's not an especially
rewarding or fruitful pursuit. Ask Jonathan Swift. Ask Robert Lothe.
Ask any tech writer who ever stood up and refused to adopt the
language of his audience. You know where it got them? Dead, dead, and
living in a cardboard box down by the railroad tracks, respectively.

There are few things I personally despise as continuously and as
righteously as I do the tendency to misuse 'fancy' words in order to
impress. It's gotten to the point that words like 'irony,'
'numerous,' 'penultimate,' and so forth just make my butt itch
because I almost never hear them used to mean what they mean. But a
word like 'functionality,' while admittedly ugly, means something
very specific in the software industry. To use another word or phrase
to describe the concept (not, parenthetically, synonymous with
'utility'), all you are doing is forcing your audience to 'translate'
your writing, and you know what their translations are going to
result in, assuming you've effectively described the concept?

Yep. 'Functionality.'

One harsh fact of technical writing is that you cannot be one for
long if you jealously guard your zomb... er... deathless prose from
jargon and industry-specific terms, regardless of whether they're
abominations.

Lisa
lisarea -at- lucent -dot- com

PS: Please note that 'Webster's Collegiate' is almost meaningless. If
you are referring to the dictionary first written by the Great
Prescriptivist Noah Webster, the name is 'Merriam-Webster
Collegiate.' This is significant, as I plan to write and publish
'Webster's Collegiate Dictionary' after work tonight, as so many have
done before me.