Comments on: Talk in the Office

by: islaygirl

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:12:28 +0000

hi town mouse — i just learned that web term, and we call it cookie crumbs at my place of business.
I LOVE ‘camel case.’ i love typography in general, so JARGON with typography, heaven.

sorry, waffley ,didn’t mean to highjack comments.

by: town mouse

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:14:32 +0000

I actually love jargon. Sad but true. I mean real jargon - a word which describes something very specialised and precise, and which non-specialists don’t understand. My recent favourits are ‘camel case’ (where words are smooshed together and then their initial letters capitalised within the new word like WordPress) and ‘breadcrumb trail’ (those little links on deeply nested websites that take you back up through the various levels). Every time I come across these words or phrases they’re like shiny new toys that I want to play with. Which is exactly how they get taken up and abased in general speech. Sorry. I’ll get me coat.

by: islaygirl

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:56:00 +0000

LEVERAGING.

Sweet fancy Moses, that one makes me nuts. Any word that is twice as long as the original word drives me insane. What’s wrong with ‘use”?

And while I’m here on my soapbox, even worse than business jargon is business jargon that takes a long word that actually means something different than the intended, replaced word. At my office right now, people (executives!) keep saying ’simplistic’ when they mean ’simple,’ not having the slightest clue that it actually means ‘naive, unsophisticated and crude.’