Seems like the whole world is going forward. I don’t just mean the latest business-speak for ‘in the future’. I am talking about the expression ‘forward slash’ when quoting a URL.
I don’t mind that the British word ‘stroke’ or ‘oblique stroke’ has universally been replaced by the American word ‘slash’. But not ‘forward slash’, please!
It’s bad enough that media presenters and advertisers say ‘logon to …’ when they mean ‘visit …’ a website. Why not just say ‘slash’? You don’t say ‘I was in my car, driving forwards’, do you?
Ever been asked to say your email address (as opposed to typing or writing it)? How did that go for you? Not straightforward, is it?
When people choose an email address they don’t consider how easy it will be in the future to impart that address orally to someone else. So you get addresses like
foxi_laydee237@hotmail.com
or
kool-dood4u123@yahoo.co.uk
You have to describe such addresses, with a high chance of something going wrong in the process.
The random digits are usually offered by the system when you set up your email account – presumably because there are already 122 customers calling themselves ‘kool-dood4u’ or whatever.
So it occurred to me that
… more →
Gordon Brown has been reshuffling his cabinet. Why is it always called a reshuffle? It’s just a shuffle, isn’t it?
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