Why isn't 'dipslay' in the dictionary?

Come now, Messrs Oxford, Webster, Collins et al. Why isn't the word 'dipslay' in your dictionaries? Anyone who has worked as a tech writer would be extremely familiar with this commonly used word. And although it's not to be found in dictionaries, almost everyone would know what it means. I have often used the word in conversation with other tech writer friends, appreciating its clumsy yet beguiling naivety. I'm clearly not the only one, as a quick Google search shows 18,000 occurrences of the word on the web, despite the fact that spell-checkers tend to insidiously target it.

So how can you have a word added to a dictionary? Unfortunately you can't just send it in to Merriam-Webster and have them list it. To quote from their website FAQ:

...the selection of which words to include in the dictionary is not based on personal preferences or popularity-contest-style votes; it is based on usage. Simply put, to gain entry to the dictionary, a word must be widely used in a broad range of professionally written and edited materials over an extended period of time. Any word that has sufficiently widespread use in such publications is eligible for dictionary entry.

On that basis, dipslay is surely a shoe-in. It occurs in a gazillion professionally written and edited manuals, several of them, no doubt, written and edited by me.

So, esteemed fellow travellers in the blogosphere, let's help raise dipslay to its rightful place in the dictionaries by using it as often as possible. Perhaps it can become the first typo officially recognised as a word in its own right, a title it surely deserves more than the much more commonplace but rather vulgar 'teh'.

No thanks, I already have one

The premises of an old brothel in Adelaide have recently gone on sale. According to the estate agent, they’re a good buy at around A$2 million. For that you get a small 5-story building with a penthouse flat, swimming pool and spa, not to mention a whole lot of history.

The local paper, that bastion of social conscience and erudite insight, The Advertiser, has a daily Vox Pop in which they asked passers-by whether they would consider buying a former brothel. One of the respondents said that, although she did invest in property, she would not buy this one because she was “looking to diversify her portfolio”. I guess you can only have so many of a good thing.

iRudeness

Hello, Ned Ludd here.

Almost 20 years ago I remember bumping into a close acquaintance at the university library. We had a brief 'how's uni' conversation, during which time he asked me several questions, and affirmed my responses with the odd "Right", "I see" and "That's great". As we wound up and he turned away I realised by the wire emanating from his left ear that he was wired for sound and probably hadn't heard a single word I said.

That was near the beginning of the portable music revolution, when we revelled in a technology known as the audio cassette, which many of today's mp3meisters have never even seen. Different time, then, but same issues--yet another nail in the coffin of civility and social interaction. Today I lined up at the local supermarket and both the shoppers in front of me were chained to their ipods. The first at least offered some grunt of acknowledgement to the checkout operator, the second was too immersed in the metronomic pounding in his ear drums to even be that gracious. In other public places such as trains and fast-food joints, basic civilities like after yous, pleases and excuse mes are passing into oblivion as increasing numbers of people have their ears shut off to the outside world, and their minds soon follow.

Whilst I am a technology junkie, I cannot understand how this can possibly be seen as progress. Let's catch it whilst it's still a trend and before it becomes normal. Let's reinforce the notion that it is simply rude to be wearing headphones whilst talking to people, and even when in a public situation where incidental conversation might occur. I know that many communications courses teach people to talk less and listen more, but I think they mean 'to each other'!

Tom Baker Says...

Here's perhaps the silliest site I have come across this silly season.

BT sat down Tom Baker, that greatest of all Dr Whos and now the narrator of Little Britain, in front of a microphone with a dictionary to record phrases. 11,593 of them, to be precise. They're then broken down and reassembled to make other sentences of various sorts, mostly a little rude, sometimes witty, always downright silly.

For a while Tom's voice was actually used by BT as the voice on their text messaging service, but alas, that is no longer. But we still have Tom Baker Says. Check it out:

Tom Baker Says...

McDonalds Spanglish

With the self-assurance that comes from having listened to Spanish lessons in mp3 files on my phone for 10 minutes a day last week, and having spent a whole day in Barcelona without being lost, pick-pocketed or kidnapped, I sauntered into El McDonaldos and confidently asked for "uno hamburguese ab fromatge por favor". The accent was impeccable, the prounciation perfect, even if I do say so myself—I sounded exactly like an Anglo-Australian tourist mumbling in broken Spanish. It was now that I remembered the problem with learning foreign languages, when the customer service officer replied in a barrage of rapid Spanish, none of which I recognised. Unperturbed and with great self-assurance, I replied, as one does, "Huh?".

I think it's back to those Spanish mp3s for me!

Clive's New Black Game

I've had a bit of fun recently playing 'Clive's New Black Game'. That's where you get in a conversation, preferably with someone you don't know all that well, and occasionally punctuate your comments with "[something] is the new black". I recommend that [something] at least be related to the topic under discussion, but it's not mandatory.

The real secret to success in this game is not to overdo it. In any given conversation any less than twice is clearly too little, and more than thrice is probably too much. Space them out—don't get too eager too early. And in a subsequent conversation with the same person, just drop it in once, preferably fairly late in the conversation.

Occasionally, someone will ask you what you mean. Just stay calm and say, "Well, you know..." then change the topic seamlessly. If really pushed for an explanation, just say "[something] is the new black" again, but with increased exasperation in your voice. Trust me, it'll work.

As a matter of interest, I ran a Google search on the phrase "is the new black". Towards the top of the 20,700 matches were the following:

• black
• red, orange, blue, grey, gold, pink, green... (hmmm, I think I sense a pattern here)
• awkward
• scar tissue
• Australia (woo, hoo!)
• plagiarism
• flatiron steak
• chocolate
• fat
• java
• bashing Bush (hard to argue with that)
  
• imperialism (now we're talking)
  
• poverty
• war
• idiocy
• apathy

and perhaps the ultimate wisdom du jour:"butt crack is the new cleavage".

I gotta use words when I talk to you

So said, T.S. Eliot's Sweeney. Somewhat prophetically, he hit on the perpetual dilemma of the web communicator. Whilst this rapid, borderless medium has some of the hallmarks of conversation, you can't see my expression (count yourself lucky), my posture, the way I stick my tongue out a little when thinking, or that strange thing I do with my right hand.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, I have recently taken to clicking on the button on the top right of a Blogspot blog, optimistically labelled 'Next Blog'. It's fun entering other people's worlds, engaging with their views on life. Or at least it would be if the signal-to-noise ratio weren't so poor.

The first problem is how many blogs have a single entry, half complete, and dated when Adam were a boy. Thought of blogging and changed your mind? Fine, but please pick up your litter on the way out. Problem number two is the blogs which are just lists of links for marketing or traffic purposes. They're the blog equivalent of spamming in my book. Perhaps we should dub them blams or spogs.

But perhaps the biggest problem of all is people who refuse to use words and punctuation when they write. Is it really cool to leave out every clue to meaning and aid to readability? u mt thnk so...bt u no 2 me imnsho it jst sks. So I was amused to read Jennifer Garrett's excellent article Eats, Blogs and Leaves. It's full of pearls of wisdom like:

It's time for a little tough love, people: Anyone who types in all lowercase needs to be taken out back and beaten. You are not e.e. cummings; you are not being "artistic." You're just too lazy to hit the shift key. If you can't be bothered with the extra keystroke, I can't be bothered to read your site.

Go girl! Fellow bloggers, when I read your blog there is a conduit between what I am reading and what you were writing. It's made up of words, grammar, punctuation, page design, and so on. The clearer you can make that conduit; the less congested by bad spelling, abbreviations, and dots, the more I can connect with you, and isn't that your goal?

What's in a name?

It just occured to me that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's surname backwards is...Ebagum! Might he really be from Lancashire?