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Subject:Re: When users want jargon From:SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 4 Jun 2002 14:42:32 EDT
Jargon can be useful, and sometimes necessary. But words made up out of
laziness or ignorance, left unchecked, proliferate like weeds, and require
just as much diligence to remove.
"Degrow" is an awful example of just such a term; it strikes me that
depending on the usage, the correct word is "shrink."
At one place I worked, an engineering manager spoke of "migrating" customers
to a new release of software. Of course, this is an ungrammatical usage:
"migrate" is an intransitive verb; you cannot make anything migrate. The
correct term was "move," or perhaps "shepherd," though given his attitude, I
think the closest word would have been "herd" 8^) I think we won that battle.
In the wireless market, "provision" is indeed a common term, and the right
one, I think. On the other hand, we had a product that detected fraudulent
use of wireless phones. The product manager wanted to use the term
"fraudster" to describe such people. I suggested the term "fraud," which has
been around since Middle English. But no. The product manager had already
made several presentations at conferences to introduce the term "fraudster"
and "capture mindshare" (er, establish a reputation?). She insisted on using
it, so we lost that one. In retrospect, I think we established a reputation
as a somewhat frivolous vendor, but what do I know?
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