Tag Archives: usage

A Phabulous Invention

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As a grumpy grammarian, I’m supposed to tsk-tsk changes to the language by anyone other than Shakespeare, but my reaction is more complex. I’ve been on the Internet since techies were trying to decide between “dot com” and “period com” to talk about websites. I sat on the sidelines when other grammarians waffled between “mouses” and “mice” for the plural of a computer mouse. Fortunately, the touchscreen showed up and rendered the issue moot.

I do object to the name of the latest must-have device, the “phablet,” a cross between a cellphone and a tablet, with, as far as I can tell, the worst features of each. Who named this device, which sounds like a tweeted tale by Aesop? A couple of people have claimed the credit or blame, depending on your point of view.

Yet I can’t help feeling that some computer terms have enriched the language. “The default is that we get up at 6:30 a.m.,” my early-bird husband says. “Time to reboot,” I’ll say when we’ve been stuck in a way of thinking that isn’t going anywhere.  I love words that slip from the machine to real life. Soft boot, hard boot, and even  humanware specialist are interesting concepts. I definitely need a hard boot on Monday mornings but a soft boot after work.  As I try to unravel the directions for a new piece of software, explanations from a humanware specialist help. (Not a techie? A hard boot occurs when you turn the computer on and the whole thing starts up, having been off duty for some length of time. A soft boot resets part of the system of a machine that’s already running. A humanware specialist trains people to use technology.)

Then they are the prefixes. The lowercase i  hasn’t been this popular since the first teen poetry magazine was published. Thanks, Apple, for giving us iPads and iPhones; I assume that iAddiction is next. Thanks, programmers, for popularizing kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, and peta- as prefixes for bytes.  After mining the ancient Greek language, techies have turned to fabricated word parts. (One prefix, yotta-, pays homage to the Star Wars’ character Yoda.) The amounts these prefixes represent seem unimaginable, except that techies have not only imagined them but also attempted to make the terms comprehensible. Did you know that the sum of five exabytes equals the number of all the words ever said during the entire span of human existence? (Source: highscalability.com)

And in this age of ecology, who could object to recycling old words to describe new situations? Such repurposing builds bridges between virtual and ordinary reality. You don’t function well when you have a virus, for example, and neither does your computer. Sadly, most human infections can’t be countered by an antivirus regimen. We just have to accept the downtime. Oh, for an escape button!

Everything new will be old someday, and everything old does not necessarily return. But as you’re tapping a stylus on your tablet, spare a thought for the ancient scribe scratching on a wax tablet with a different sort of stylus. You’re both likely to have sore forearms and fingers, just as you’re both likely to change the language. And in the end, that’s mostly a good thing.

See you in the cloud.

Following Guest?

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Some years ago, I stood on Fifth Avenue waiting for the next convoy of buses to arrive. (FYI, Car People: New York City buses travel in packs, apparently under orders to stay within sight of another bus driver at all times.) I remarked to a fellow potential passenger that I was going to be late. “I can’t be late,” he replied. “I’m a physician. I’m ‘delayed,’ not ‘late.’” So I get why doctors have patients, because patience is what you need when your healer is attending to someone else’s life-threatening condition or waiting for public transportation.

My lawyer and accountant have clients, but the stores in my neighborhood have customers — or at least they used to (more about that later). Why the difference? The official definition of a client is someone who receives services. A customer, according to several dictionaries I consulted, pays for goods or services. The term client seems to elevate the service provider to the status of a professional, someone who’s chosen a career path and studied mightily for the qualifications to practice it. (Why practice, by the way? Haven’t they perfected their skills by now?)

I realize, of course, that value judgments are all over these words. Plenty of people who have spent years learning a craft or trade and decades pursuing it have customers. When I drop off clothes at the dry cleaners, for example, the hardworking people who run the place manage to remove all sorts of stains and spruce up my garments, all the while smiling at their customers and staying on the right side of the many laws that regulate their business.

Now “trending,” as they say on social media, is guest. Hotels used to have customers or clients, but now they have guests. Okay, you stay overnight somewhere, they take care of you and at least in theory try to make you comfortable. Those activities do fall into the category of hospitality, so I can live with guest when it comes to lodging. But employees at my favorite frozen yogurt place now bid the “following guest” to step up to the little scale to weigh each portion of empty but oh-so-tasty calories and compute the price. How am I a guest when I have to pay for this product? Should I extrapolate and charge for the asparagus at my next dinner party? I imagine the corporate expert who wrote the script for this frozen-yogurt franchise. “Let’s create a cozy atmosphere! Everyone will feel like a guest in our home and eat more yogurt,” they say in my fantasy, although how anyone could live with three flat-screen televisions displaying tween sit-coms and a color scheme that could most mercifully be called garish is beyond my comprehension.

My recommendation: Make everyone (patient, client, guest) a customer. Because, as we all know, the customer is always right.