Betalogue

[Via Daring Fireball’s Linked List.]

Apple has just posted the latest version of its Style Guide in PDF format. It’s an interesting document containing all kinds of recommendations concerning capitalization, spelling, abbreviations, etc.

I couldn’t help chuckling when I saw this, though:

bug   Avoid; use problem, condition, issue, or situation instead.

It sounds a bit too much like denial to me! Lord knows bugs do exist, and Apple’s own software is far from immune. And most people I know call them just that, bugs.

I realize it might not be entirely politically correct for Apple employees to use such a word in the context of trying to deal with a customer’s problems, but it’s a bit excessive to expect them to avoid the word altogether, especially in the absence of any indication of context.

I can also think of many “official” contexts in which Apple uses the word bug without any difficulty. All you have to do is launch Safari and select “Customize Address Bar…” in the “View” menu. The B word is right there:

Oops. I guess the button text could easily be replaced with “Report Problem,” but what about that button image?

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.