Mind your language!

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2 April 2012

I wrote with some amusement some years ago, about the propensity of the IT industry to go a bit daft when it comes to language. Not just in terms of the over use of the dreaded three letter acronym (TLA), but also just making up words.

Now, the IT industry is not solely guilty in this respect and business speak is responsible for allowing the sort of discipline hopping that has resulted in the widespread use of the awful ‘proactive’ and the absolutely indefensible ‘irregardless’.

Now, most people, in using the term proactive, for instance, usually mean either active, or pre-emptive. However, neither one of these words seem to have enough impact alone and so must be augmented to become pro-active which is really just active-active. But the degree of impact leads to another word crime in the form of the hateful ‘impactful’!

Now this true abomination has crept into presentations and pitches at many levels but all it betrays is a deep lack of understanding of the language. But worse still is another example of basic misunderstanding of how word stems develop to produce variants in the form of ‘performant’.

Performant is used to mean something that performs to a high level. This made-up nonsense was used in an official statement by the Irish country manager of a household name IT company just weeks ago!

Now, when people such as I get het up about such things, we are often told to calm down and appreciate the wonderful fluidity of the language that allows such development. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the development of language and the English language is one of the most robust, adaptable and, consequently, powerful languages in the world, but it is so because it has very specific rules for how words and variants are developed and evolve-and every one of the cited examples break these basic rules!

My worry when writing about this previously was that by regularly using such nonsense terms, the IT industry risked undermining itself with the very people it sought to convince of the need for greater and better use of technology. But things have developed beyond mere making up words, now it seems the technology industry is trying to tell us how we can use words too.

Famously, Google has tried to discourage the use of the word "google" as a verb and failed miserably as it is now, with a small g, included in various dictionaries as a generic verb meaning to use an internet search engine.

The latest King Canute strategy comes from none other than Facebook. In its latest proposed user agreement, it exhorts people not to use the word ‘Book’ in any manner which may infringe on its trademark.

"You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Book and Wall), or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines or with our prior written permission."

Alas the IT industry is not averse to a bit of infringement when it suits but usually sense prevails and fair usage applies.

Paul Maritz at VM World in Cannes a few years ago said half in jest and wholly in earnest that the company reserves the right to slap a ‘v’ in front of anything it bally well pleases! Along with the near ubiquitous ‘i’ prefix, such things are seen as fairly harmless, but one such instance that could have been less so occurred a few years ago when EMC brought out the VMAX enterprise storage platform.

Now a little company called Yamaha had, in 1985 brought out a motorcycle called the VMAX to great acclaim. It was immediately branded the nutter’s tool of choice, based as it was around a 1200cc V-four engine and a rather bendy, cruiser-style chassis with underperforming brakes. Despite the marque being reintroduced in 2005, sense was seen by both sides in realising that few people were going to confuse a great hairy-chested motorcycle for an enterprise storage array, and the lawyers went home disappointed. Not all such spats are ended so amicably, as Ferrari in naming an anniversary year Formula 1 car the F150 incurred the wrath of Ford, who had that designation for a long running line of utility vehicles, or pick-up trucks as they are also known. Now, how someone would mistake any Ferrari for a Ford, much less a Formula 1 contender, beggars belief.

And this is what it all centres around. When the IT industry already has a poor reputation for clear, concise language due to the prevalence of daft, made-up words and business speak, starts pulling hard and fast rules on vague, or worse still, imaginary trademarks, it is self-defeating to say the least.

For Facebook to ask users to agree not to use the words ‘book’, ‘face’ or ‘wall’ because of their association with the company is just the height of arrogance. It is the kind of overprotective nonsense that spawns the likes of patent trolling and tit-for-tat suits that can be seen playing out in the world’s courts. The current spat between Samsung and Apple is a classic example.

The IT industry, and the companies that play a major role in it, has every right to protect itself and its intellectual property from unreasonable intrusion and infringement, but this kind of thing undermines the entire edifice and actually makes such companies look silly, sapping confidence and making people regard them as vain, self-interested and arrogant. In a world where social media can accelerate and multiply such perceptions, companies would do well to be a little more sensible in the way they craft not only their terms and conditions, but also their outlook on fair usage and parody. Already, the term ‘Facebook’ is being used as a verb, with certain T-shirts sporting the phrase "I Facebooked your mum".

In the same way that Hoover, Biro, Kleenex and Xerox got over their generic usages, so too did Google. Alas, Facebook seems to be a little immature in this respect, with the proposed new T&Cs as testament. Let’s hope that, as a company, it cops on to the inevitability of the failure of such folly before it spreads further in the IT industry leading to us all having to mind our usages.

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