A colleague beefs: I called Nokia today and in one message they said go to “nokia dot com backslash support” but to add insult they said in a subsequent message go to “nokia dot com forward slash support”
And jeez ain’t she right?? And this isn’t just the problem of people saying “backslash” (\) when they mean “slash” (/), though I could go off on THAT for an hour, too.
This is the problem of people who CONSUME things talking like the people who MAKE things. Raise your hand if you’ve ever talked about a “shot” in a movie … I certainly have … as in “Didn’t you love that shot where Riggs jumps on a motorcycle and starts chasing the bad guys while behind him there’s an airplane taking off? Man, what a great shot!”
The general public adopted the word “shot” some time in the 50s or 60s, I would guess, when filmmakers became pop heroes. “Shot” is how filmmakers and film critics talk and most of us aren’t either.
I know that when it comes to usage, there’s ultimately no such thing as bad, but when people say “site” when they mean “page” and “blog” when they mean “blog entry” and “podcast” when they mean any piece of audio anywhere on the Internets, it gives me “angst.”
… even though I’m not a philosopher or a psychiatrist.