A friend who's a tech writer recently mentioned that one client has begun complaining about "violent" language being used in tech documents. Among the offending terms:
- Bullets, as in bulleted lists
- Cutting edge
- Execute, as in 'to carry out an order'
- Fire, as in 'to cause a function to be performed'
- Hits, as in on a web site
- Launch, as in launching a product or application
- Master/Slave hardware terminology
- Target, as in the recipient of data sent from a source to a target.
- Trigger, as in 'to cause something to happen.'
- War rooms
As I type that, I realize that I just enclosed it in a BLOCKQUOTE. I wonder how they'd feel about that? It reminds me of the (possibly fictional) situation I heard of where a person was fired for using the word "pedantic" in an official document about education...and a reader objected to such perversions in a work environment!
I swear (whups, can't do that) it makes me want to pound (er...) lb. (or maybe £ ?) my head into my desk.
There comes a point, folks, where you just have to say "What the [CENSORED]
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