work peeves

[rone]

• Rampant misuse of 'ETA': the A in ETA stands for 'arrival'.  Some coworkers use it when they mean 'completion', 'delivery', or 'repair'.  Wikipedia alleges that it may be used "metaphorically" or that it could stand for "achieve[ment]", but this smacks of backformation and must be shunned.
• "Let's take this offline": this means either, "Let's discuss this over private email instead of boring everyone on the CC list with the details," which is stupid because the discussion will still be online, or, "Let's discuss this once the meeting we're sharing with other people is over," which is stupid because, unless the dialogue is occurring between people on a conference call, you're already offline.

Think.  Use the right fucking word, every time.  Only good things can happen.

Comments

Wait, how is delivery

[notr.livejournal.com]

not arrival?

And you think a line can only be a wire? "Take this offline" was already an old expression by the time I started at IBM in 1984, when people other than the programmers were barely starting to get connected online with PROFS, and it seemed to me to be in analogy to taking a machine off a manufacturing line for repair. It's getting something out of the way of productive work that needs to be hammered out.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A truck arrives and delivers something. They are not the same thing. Don't even try that. And comparing meetings or email discussions to an assembly line is an insult to assembly lines.

My mail is delivered

[notr.livejournal.com]

and arrives in my mailbox.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

The mail delivery agent delivers a message; a message arrives in your box. These are events that cleave together but are cleaved apart.

I still don't see

[notr.livejournal.com]

where you can cleave them apart. If the delivery agent (whether machine or person) attempts delivery but the message never arrives in my box (whether on my mail server or on my porch), it hasn't actually been delivered.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It's a matter of perspective. Things that are delivered arrive but not all things that arrive are delivered.

Certainly.

[notr.livejournal.com]

Arrival is not always delivery. But delivery is always arrival, so an estimate for delivery is always an ETA.

I wuz gonna say something ...

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

But apparently the wiki-boss-man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_and_offline) has laid down the law on the meanings of online and offline. Wiki can't be wrong, can he?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia is why we can't have nice things.

[alfvaen]

What about "manual"? I still feel a little weird about saying that I did something "manually" when I mean that I moved my mouse to cause my operation system to cause icons to move from one window to another, causing a number of complicated operations to ensue resulting in a certain pattern of magnetic imprints on one hard drive to be replicated on another hard drive. As opposed to, you know, clicking my mouse button twice while the pointer is over another icon to cause a batch file to run and do the same thing.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

While we're at it, is it best to use:

"Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!"

or

"Hay, ewe kid's git, off my lonne."

I'm guessing the latter, since it eschews the exclamation point.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Would you complain about at my work when two programmers are going to work together on a single machine and one says "I'll drive" referring to controlling the keyboard?

It's not clear to me how pervasive metaphors are bad, when they're not used in contexts where the non-metaphorical meaning conflicts.

[loosestrife.livejournal.com]

I like all these silly metaphors, perhaps because for me the originating image tends to linger. Whenever anyone talks about "firing up" an application my mind's ear fills in the whoosh as it catches and the rumble as it, um, gears up.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

The OED lists seven meanings for "offline" (as an adjective), of which only two have to do with computing. The earliest usage noted is from 1919, in the sense of "Situated or carried on away from a railway, or the main line of a railway; (also) not done by rail." You might as well complain "Let's take this offline" is stupid because no one's on a train.

Admittedly what you really want is the adverbial definition: "As an offline process; while offline (in various senses); spec. (a) by offline equipment; (b) with a delay between the production of data and its processing; (c) when not connected to a computing network, esp. the Internet," none of which really is applicable to "let's take this offline". But that argument misses the point, which is that the word "offline" originally referred to railroads and now is used in contexts of computing, airlines, manufacturing, sports, and video production; all these now-legitimate uses began with someone using the "wrong" word.

[(Anonymous)]

Please provide an updation and do the needful.