Monday, March 04, 2013

More Stupid (if Not More-Stupid) Truncations

In "Lapsing Into a Comma," I hmphed about what I called illegal clipping, the too-common habit of oddly and sometimes misleadingly truncating a proper noun. USA Today becomes "USA," Consumer Reports becomes "Consumers," Mount Vernon Square becomes "Mount Vernon." (Oddly, I started my rant with the use of "Van Dorn" to refer to the Van Dorn Street station on the D.C. area's Metro system, which in retrospect doesn't seem that odd at all -- and isn't misleading the way "Mount Vernon" is.)

The list keeps growing. I've been biting my tongue for 15 years while my co-workers referred to Lotus Notes as "Lotus." (If anything, the e-mail program originally produced by Lotus Software is "Notes," the way Microsoft Word is "Word" and not "Microsoft.") Thankfully, the Post just switched from Lotus to Microsoft -- I mean, from Notes to Outlook.

And I was rather surprised to learn that everyone but me refers to the restaurant chain Noodles & Company as "Noodles."

Then there was the cellphone conversation I overheard today, in which a woman was telling her kid's father or nanny or babysitter that it was almost time for "Sesame." Not "Sesame Street" or "The Street" -- "Sesame." Maybe she can get together with the "Noodles" people and do some Chinese cooking.

5 comments:

Greg Finley said...

Does MSGPOST still exist?

Dave Strauss said...

My (least) favorite: when people ask for my "social", meaning my Social Security Number.

Bill said...

Yep, Greg, it still exists.

Frank said...

I knew a fellow who often traveled in Africa. He hated it when fellow travelers would refer to the capital of Ethiopia as "Addis". The name means "New Flower", so calling it "Addis" is just saying "New" ... so remember to always say "Addis Ababa".

Aleta said...

My favorite: "satellite," for satellite dish, heard in rural Mississippi a mile from the blacktop.