Gadget jargon still confuses many
WAP, dongle, and cookie are some of the least understood words by the British public, according to a survey.
The Gadget Helpline surveyed more than 5,000 users and came up with a Top 10 list of technology-related words people find most confusing.
The firm says companies should use language people understand, rather than resorting to jargon.
The move is backed by the Plain English Campaign, saying it would help bring down the “walls of techno-babble”.
Peter Griffiths, campaign secretary for the Plain English Campaign, told the BBC that there were ways to make things easy for users to understand.
“We need to pull our head out of the digital clouds and use plain English,” he said.
“If changing the name isn’t an option then a glossary of terms would work. Not only does it explain the language, but it’s a nice way of learning for people who don’t have such a good grasp of the language.”
Many of the words, such as Digital TV, have entered the English language but not everyone knows what they mean.
On top of that, many firms have different names for identical products, which complicates things further.
Market forces
Alex Watson, editor of Custom PC magazine, told the BBC that companies were under pressure to come up with new names and some of those would eventually wind up in our lexicon.
“Some names are just made up for marketing purposes, while others are chosen so users can relate to the term.
“One way of linking peripherals to a Mac was via an interface called FireWire. On a Sony it is called i.LINK and it’s also called Lynx by Texas Instruments, even though all three are exactly the same thing. That hardly makes things easy for the consumer.
“Even when the industry tries to appeal to regular people, it doesn’t always work. Take Wi-Fi – it was named solely because of HiFi. Wireless fidelity doesn’t actually mean anything, but the alternative was 802.11B which hardly trips off the tongue.”
Mr Watson said that language frequently evolved in such a way as the term would make more sense.
“It may be called Wi-Fi but most people would call it a wireless network, which is exactly what it is,” he said.
TOP 10 CONFUSING TERMS
Dongle
Cookie
WAP
Phone jack
(Nokia) Navi Key
Time shifting
Digital TV
Ethernet
PC Suite
Desktop
Definitions: Wikipedia.
Content courtesy of https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8017178.stm
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