There are certain products that suffer from permanent identity errors in the way people write or pronounce them.
1. Firefox’s Abbreviation
The mistake: Writing the abbreviated Firefox as FF
The right way: Writing as Fx or fx
Who says this is so? The Firefox developers themselves (see point 8 on that link).
Yes, I’ve been guilty of using FF on several occasions in article content here. Oops.
2. Pronunciation of GIF
The mistake: Saying GIF with a hard G like ghost
The right way: Saying GIF with a soft G like giraffe
Who says GIF is pronounced with a soft G? CompuServe, as they invented the format.
This is yet another that I’m guilty of, however I still pronounce GIF with a hard G anyway because that’s what I’m used to, and the fact the word graphics in Graphics Interchange Format has a hard G in it – and I’m not about to start pronouncing graphics as "giraphics".
3. The proper full name for Internet Explorer
The mistake: Microsoft Internet Explorer
The right way: Windows Internet Explorer
For this one you can easily point the blame at Microsoft for changing the name of a product that didn’t need it. We all know that Microsoft isn’t the best at picking names and should have left well enough alone, but didn’t.
In case you’re wondering, yes, WIE is acceptable as an abbreviation – but not MSIE. The old standby IE is also acceptable.
4. Mac and MAC
The mistake: Writing MAC in reference to an Apple Macintosh computer
The right way: When referring to an Apple Macintosh computer, it’s Mac
MAC does not mean Apple Macintosh. MAC in tech terms means Media Access Control, commonly referred to as a MAC address, or Make-up Art Cosmetics. Yes, it’s true when referring to the cosmetics company it’s technically M·A·C, but being most people don’t know how to use the middle dot HTML character, it’s written commonly as MAC.
The next time you see someone write, "I love my MAC", you can reply with, "You love blush and eyeliner?" and be 100% correct.
5. Pronunciation of Disqus
The mistake: Pronouncing like discus
The right way: Pronouncing like discuss
Both Dave and myself pronounced Disqus (the comment system used here) wrong for a really long time until I realized one day it’s supposed to be pronounced as discuss, as in to have discussion as Disqus is a comment system.
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I’m definitely guilty of number five. Every time I bring up Disqus in a conversation, I start saying it the wrong way and then have to correct myself midway xD
I scored 3/5. What do I win!?
I guess “guilty” on all points, BUT as far as I’m concerned, I’ll stay that way on #1. To me “Fx” means “video effects” or even the FX network on TV, not Firefox. I’ll be sticking with “FF” for my favorite browser-unless that means I won’t be allowed to use it anymore.
Hope I won’t face legal charges for pronouncing them my way
Well i am guilty of all numbers but i ll try to pronounce correct now.
I struggled with Asus for the longest time.
wow.. I figured this would include the hijacking of the metric naming conventions for thousand, million, billion, etc for measures they were never meant to represent. For example, “giga” means “billion” (1,000,000,000), not the actual 1,073,741,824 bytes we use it for, which would actually be “gibi”.
And not only did the computer science world hijack these prefixes, they refuse to pronounce “giga” correctly. It is correctly pronounced “jigga”.
For your enjoyment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnqtXOi1iaY
Yeah, like I’m going to be the wanker that corrects everybody’s pronunciation of ‘gif’ and tells them that it’s true because compuserve says so… Right. When I moved to Oz and discovered that everyone pronounces ‘fillet’ like ‘fill it’ I was a bit surprised. Now I just say ‘I’ll have the eye fillit rare please’.
It’s ironic to find, in an article on pronunciation mistakes, something as awful as “Both Dave and myself pronounced …”
Ain’t it?
Interesting subject . I would appreciate viewing a video where Rich correctly pronounces a whole list of tech related words,jargon and acronyms. Would especially enjoy hearing someone pronounce “Ubuntu” correctly?
‘Ubuntu’ must always be pronounced with a flagrant accent and bug-eyes, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDN3YPucpU