Web Site Grammar
September 1st, 2005
One of the joys of being on the front lines of a web site is that I’m the first to receive feedback, which happens every day. Yesterday I received a note from a concerned reader who felt that my grammar wasn’t quite up to snuff:
‘On www.uie.com, there is a box about the UIE blog. Please correct the grammar to say, “It’s different from..” rather than the incorrect, “It’s different than..”
Yes, it does make a difference. The educated among us place less value on your recommendations if even the most basic rules of grammar are not followed.’
Here’s the image in question:
I’ll be the first to admit that my grammar isn’t perfect. My curiosity, however, wouldn’t let me simply take this person’s word for it and accept that my usage was incorrect. So I did a bit of digging…
My extensive research turned up a comparison of “different from” vs. “different than” on alt.usage.english.org. Apparently, “different than” is used much more in speech than it is in writing and is much more popular in the U.S. than it is in the U.K. Who knew?
After reading this comparison, I feel justified in how I used it in this situation because I stayed within common usage. However, there seems to be two opinions on common usage. One is to let common usage fly, as I did, accepting any and all usage as OK. The other is to hold to strict, agreed-upon conventions, based on past usage but not necessarily current usage.
The Information Architects out there might recognize this as a debate central to the recent advent of folksonomies, a user-driven approach to organizing content. In general, the debate was between the “categorization from usage over time” camp vs. the “categorization by professionals” camp. The debate has since become more nuanced, because there were many more subtleties to it than were first apparent. Not surprisingly, it seems like folksonomies will be useful in some areas, while traditional categorization will be useful in others. (and probably combinations of the two in still others)
Despite my extensive research into the usage of “different than” and my reluctance to give in on account of what is “proper”, the kind reader’s input is still most certainly valuable. Not only did they pay alarmingly close attention to the words used, but they took the time to write in about it. That fact, more than anything else, has persuaded me to update the graphic.
It’s an important lesson, retaught, and it is different from the lesson on grammar. The lesson? Every word matters.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:43 am
Whilst we are discussing the subject of word usage on Brain Sparks. What is the thinking behind the use of the partial phrase “think tan” in the top banner image on this page?
Some people may have assumed that this phrase is just a clipped version of “think tank”, but I don’t think that this is the case.
If it was meant to be think tank then the designer would have included part of the missing k in the clipped image in the same way that they have clipped “web design” in the same image.
No there is definitely something else happening here:
Perhaps Jared is just daydreaming about next holiday in Barbados.
Maybe he wants us to extend our web pallets to include more than just red, green and blue.
He could be encouraging us to read the books of Amy Tan and is drawing our attention to his “yin eyes” which help to provide his insights.
And don’t even get me started on that bleedin logo. Since when did sparks appear as a wave? And why aren’t the sparks/waves being directed outward to other people rather than being transmitted to the persons bottom.
September 2nd, 2005 at 5:29 am
Slightly aside, though somewhat related, perhaps: a web site of mine for years was written in British (or International?) English?
I got so many emails from Americans who thought I had spelling mistakes everywhere. One professional writer from the US even offered to help me (as he liked my site, but my writing was generally poor anyway!). But even he didn’t realize I was using British english.
In the end, given that some 70 to 90% of my readership was from the US, I began to write in American English instead. No complaints since. I would guess most people are familiar with US English through culture, the online world and so on.
Will that one day become the defacto English?
September 6th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Anup, that’s a really interesting example. I find it interesting because your expected audience wasn’t necessarily your actual audience, and you correctly changed your writing behavior to suit them, and not the other way around…
September 11th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Getting back to the original point about “different than/from”, the commonest usage in British English nowadays is “different to”. When I was at school (35 years ago), anything other than “”different from” was plain wrong – mind you, I went to what we call a “grammar school” and studied Latin. I’ve just about reconciled myself to “different to”, despite the contradicition between the “de-” prefix meaning from and the preposition “to”, simply because I now rarely hear people say anything else. “Different than” will always sound wrong to me.
December 4th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
I cringe when I hear ‘different than’! I guess I think of ‘than’ as being preceded by a comparative adjective, e.g. harder, better, etc. Different is not a comparative adjective even though you have to compare things to determine whether they’re different or not! You have an apostrophe typo: kind reader’s input is still most certainly valuable. Not only did they
should read readers’ — it’s so odd to make errors while talking about them! I came upon your site when I was looking for an explanation of another of my pet peeves: much different. It’s the same problem: taking different as a comparative.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Okay. I’ve had it!
Long a believer that, in language, usage trumps academic arcania everytime, I’ve begged of “Web site” and “Web page” (or, I think worse, “Web-site” or “Web-page”) in favor of “website” and “webpage.” AND I generally don’t capitalize “Web” or “Internet” unless they appear at the beginning of sentence (or the former appears in the full moniker: “World Wide Web.”)
I’m getting static about this from all manner of people, despite the fact that both terms — Web and Internet — have become so common in everyday language they’ve almost stopped being proper names and become simple nouns.
So, as far as common usage goes, what’s the final skinny? “Web site” or “website”?
September 25th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Sir, Forget trivialities of hyphenation or capitalization. Instead, be concerned that “everytime” is not a word.