Although I can perfectly understand that not everyone is going to know everything about everything, it still frustrates me when someone uses a specific term incorrectly. If you are unsure about certain terminology, there is no shame in asking. This is particularly essential for journalists and professional writers, because your readers have come to expect a certain level of quality and accuracy from your work.
One example that I’ve spotted several times both online and offline is a variation on this sentence:
Did you see Chad’s latest blog?
What they really mean to ask is if you have seen Chad’s latest blog post. For example, my blog is Beyond the Rhetoric, whereas a blog post would refer to a specific article. In other words, you could say that a blog is akin to an entire book, whereas a blog post is akin to a chapter or page in that book.
Since mainstream media is getting increasingly interested in social media, you see some mainstream outlets getting involved with Facebook and Twitter. When Ashton Kutcher was racing with CNN to see who would be the first to get one million followers on Twitter, I saw a newspaper article saying that Ashton was working toward having one million tweets. A follower is not a tweet. If this newspaper had read my glossary of Twitter terminology, they would know the difference between a follower and a tweet.
The world of gizmos and gadgets is clearly not immune to this phenomenon of collective ignorance. Similar to the previous example of a blog versus a blog post, I hear far too many people say something like this:
I just got a great deal on a DVD! It was only $30!
And there they stand holding a giant Toshiba box. They really want to say that they just purchased a DVD player. A DVD is the single disc with a movie on it. A DVD player plays that. In like manner, I hear people refer to MP3 players simply as MP3s. The MP3 is a music file; the MP3 players plays it.
Have you encountered similar mistakes? Do you have a similar pet peeve?
Update: Something I thought I’d add. I don’t have nearly as much of an issue with people who transform nouns into verbs. Go ahead and say that you are going to Google something or Facebook someone. Strangely, that sounds perfectly fine to me.
It drives me nuts when people refer to a blog post as a ‘blog’. What infuriates even more is that some people have had arguments with me over this and there are also some people who indulgently roll their eyes when I refer to a ‘blog post’. Like I’m some backward, lacking in blogging jargon newbie.
Boils my blood!
Bet you got the last bit from the first sentence 🙂
P.S Googling something and Facebooking someone makes perfect sense to me too!
Great post!
The one pet peeve I have is when someone says they waited “on line” to get something. NO, you didn’t wait on line, you waited “in a line” of people. So you should “I waited in line.”