I just got invited to a meeting for a time zone that doesn’t exist this time of year. In the US EST does not stand for Eastern time, it stands for Eastern Standard Time (~November-~March), EST is not an active time zone, it is EDT Eastern Daylight Time. Its a pointless thing, most people probably don’t notice, but its wrong.
Fake internet points to anyone who knows why DB-9 bothers me.
Edit: corrected a missing n in an eastern
People who refuse to change how they misuse or misspell words. To/too, could’ve/could of, brake/break, and all that. I know they’ve read the correct versions, they just refuse to change.
Followed by people trying to justify the misuse. We have dictionaries. There’s some kind of standard. Yes, language does drift. But unless we want to go back to the 1600’s or so where people just made up whatever looked right for spelling, there should be some effort in maintaining a standard and not just “I can’t be bothered to do it right so I’ll claim common usage or language drift.”
That, and people who drive with their hazard flashers on for no apparent reason whatsoever.
I see this fairly often for other two languages*, but the reasoning is the same.
The “language drifts” argument is actually fallacious (is-ought fallacy). In my opinion the main reasons to be lenient towards deviations from the standard are:
- Unless heavily overdone, they don’t affect comprehension.
- They reinforce the informal register, and the register itself helps to convey meaning.
- They allow individual expression, doubly so when the misspelling has dialectal marks.
- A standard is just a standard. It should be seen as a reference, not as encompassing everything that is allowed within a language and its spelling.
*and I use it, at least in my L1. In my case it’s typically due to #3.
I’ll concede points for stylistic or deliberately informal language, I didn’t want to belabor anyone reading what I wrote to get into the weeds over deliberate “abuse” of the language to convey whatever the author wishes to. There’s certainly room for slang, too.
I’m much more pointing the finger at the more simple things that can be corrected easily, hence the minor irritation, not someone willfully knowing they’re using an informal register. IOW, “could have” to “could’ve” to “coulda” is decreasing formality order, and deliberate, vs “could of” which appears completely unaware of how the words actually work. Break/brake isn’t even comparable. Completely different words. Plenty of room on that one for autocorrect to mess it up though. IMO there’s a difference.
With voice to text becoming more common homonyms are going to become the de facto standard. All of the there there and their confusion, will be too too much, not to mention it’s it’s and it’s…
You forgot “its”.
Should I add “people loudly using voice to text to SMS in public places” to my list of annoyances?
E: you conveniently fell into my second paragraph. Maybe we could improve voice to text contextual translation so that homonyms don’t happen so often rather than yet another “can’t be bothered to fix it” excuse.
All the voice2 text I’ve used gets these all right, by context. Better than many people.
When you have a dispenser (liquid soap, sanitizer gel, shampoo, etc.) and it’s almost empty, so the damn bottle gets knocked over from the slightest nudge. Makes me so irrationally mad.
My partner leaves his drink bottle near the sink, empty or mostly empty.
I accidentally knock that fucker over at least twice a day. I move it to a different part of the kitchen where it’s very unlikely to get accidentally knocked, he knows the spot so it’s not like I’ve hidden it or inconvenienced him.
But he puts it back next to the fucking sink and I knock it over and it makes so much fucking noise and scares the dog and I have to stop what I’m doing to go pick it up, just in case it does have a bit of water in it and creates a slip hazard, and it’s going to be the reason I suffocate him in his sleep.
Certain mispronunciations, such as when someone mispronounces “escape” as “excape,” “moot” as “mute,” “etcetera” as “excetera,” and finally “supposedly” as “supposably.”
Pointless? The most pointless thing that aggravates me?
Mowing grass.
It’s not solving the problem. At all.
My wife’s car has a emergency brake PADEL (not pedal) on the dashboard that is connected on one end and you can push down on the other end or loop your finger under the padel and pull up (like a button version of a diving board). You push it to turn on the Emergency Brake, and once on, you pull it to turn it off. But what if it’s off and you pull it? Nothing. If it’s on and you push it? Nothing. This button takes 2 inputs but depending on its current state only 1 input will do anything. It’s bad UI/UX in the real world.
Here’s a stock photo of the kind of button but in a different car than my wife’s.
Of course you are welcome to be annoyed by whatever you want but I think I kind of agree with this design… Regardless of what state the car is in, you always know that if you push that button, the car should now be in park. If you’re a dum dum like most of us, and you forget whether you’ve done it already or not, you don’t need to check the dash or anything to decide whether to push it or not, you can just do it. It’s like saving twice in a Pokemon game. I like that it’s two distinct gestures, but compressed down into one mechanism.
However, I’m not sure I like that it’s push to engage and pull to disengage. In my car I’m pretty sure it’s pull to engage and push to disengage, which reminds me of the old lever style of parking brake.
Truth is, I made up which way was which because nothing about this push-pull paddle expresses which direction is which action and I can never remember. Every time I interact with it is a guess. Do it one way, if I was wrong then do it the other. I’m onboard with idempotency but I feel this trades clarity for it.
I think that’s actually good UX from a safety standpoint. It means the button is “idempotent”: doing an operation the first time puts it in a state, and then doing it again leaves it still in that state.
If you’re in a moment of panic and want the brake on, you might push the button a bunch of times in quick succession to “be sure.” If it were a regular button, this would rapidly toggle it on and off, which would leave it in an uncertain state after you pressed it so fast. This way it turns on and stays active until you are ready to turn it off, and then you do another idempotent operation to turn it off. I don’t think all buttons should be like this, but I think it’s a good design decision for a button used in an “emergency.”
