joel: Sheep (Default)

A co-coworker came to me today and asked my opinion about using ‘thru’ vs. ‘through’, and when I did some looking, I found that the definitions listed in most dictionaries appear to be missing an important consideration (in fairness, dictionaries are not generally repositories for the finer points of things like this).

‘Thru’ is, at least according to most of the dictionaries I consulted, an accepted variant spelling of ‘through’, but is noted as being considered “informal”. I would agree with that for most prose, but there are cases in which ‘thru’ is, at least to me, perfectly warranted even in a semi-formal writing.

The main usage that comes to mind, and the one the question was about, is using it in the context of describing a range, in which case I feel that the most appropriate variant is the one that most closely matches “how compact” the overall expression is. For example:

  • Tuesday, July 4th through Friday, July 7th
  • July 4th thru 7th
  • July 4th through July 7th
  • July 4–7 (that's an en dash, for the heathens out there…)

Thus, using ‘thru’ is appropriate as a “mid-point” between the longest form (the word ‘through’) and the shortest (the en dash).

joel: Sheep (Default)
Saw a new frob on the Google results page today: the "Wonder Wheel". Checked it out a bit, and it does in fact appear to do a fairly decent job of one of the most difficult things to track in search engines: 'related concepts'. For amusement and (hopefully) educational value, I tried searching for "Google Wonder Wheel" and selecting the Wonder Wheel on the results. What can I say, meta amuses me. The search turned out just fine, but then I made the mistake of actually going to the documentation site for it and trying to read it. Had I not gotten there directly from the core Google site, I would have been seriously wondering if I had somehow gotten misdirected to a phishing site; the main distinction was that whomever wrote the site was fairly clearly a native speaker of English, given the word choices used. But the rest of the writing... I believe my third grade English teacher would have failed any essay written this way. A small sampling of the gems to be found:
  • The fun starts off with the very first paragraph of the main page:
    "The wheel shaped like tool, with the simple aim of simplifying and arranging search results, is gaining popularity among users worldwide (where available) and reached 1 million google wonder wheels."
  • Then we have another lovely bit further down:
    "Google wonder wheel by definition is a wheel display of relevant search terms."
  • Moving on, we find the next gem in the lead-in to the "Step by Step" page:
    "Google Wonder Wheel is a new great feature from Google which allows you to see relevant search results to your query in a unique semantically relevant and graphically design way."
  • Another from the same page:
    "Among all the options Google has to offer its users in order to optimize their search results the Google Wonder Wheel is the option you should look for in order to display relevant results in a different way."
  • And finally, the treasure I found just before I stopped inflicting the site on myself:
    Also find the best Stock Market online
    I have no idea what the hell this is bit is about; the words "Stock Market" are a link which I refuse to replicate here, because I have no interest in promoting it.
Free hint to Google: if you're going to have such a cool feature, you might want to consider assigning a copy-editor (or at least a tech writer!) to go over the public information site *before* you roll it out.

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joel: Sheep (Default)
Joel Aelwyn

September 2012

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