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

Subject: Have you ever felt the need to create a new word? (take II)
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: Surag R <suragtechwriter -at- gmail -dot- com>, TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:59:38 -0400

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

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

References:
Have you ever felt the need to create a new word?: From: Kathy Bowman
Have you ever felt the need to create a new word?: From: Geoff Hart
Re: Have you ever felt the need to create a new word?: From: Surag R

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