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5 Tech Items People Write Or Say Wrong

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 03:00 AM PDT

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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5 Tech Items People Write Or Say Wrong