Archive for category language

Chief Justice John Roberts and the Oath of Office Flub

Posted by jasonwong in language on January 23rd, 2009

I am not a psycholinguist, but Steven Pinker is. He wrote an article for the New York Times explaining the inauguration flub that most people have heard about now. President Obama was taking the oath of office spoken by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Roberts messed it up. The two eventually figured it out, though.

Anyway, there are all kinds of conspiracy theories, but apparently The Texas Law Review Manual on Style. There’s a rule where you are not supposed to split a verb like “to go” with an adverb like “boldly.” So “To boldly go” is wrong, but “To go boldly” is OK.

In the Constitution, the phrase is “To faithfully execute…” and Roberts, having internalized these language rules, said “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.”

Oops. :) It does go to show how internalized language can become.

Link to article

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Alleviating Office feature bloat with text-based search

Posted by jasonwong in clutter, good design, language on April 28th, 2008

A common complaint about Microsoft Office is how many features and commands it has. The new “ribbon interface” introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 was designed to help users find their desired command more easily. A prototype feature that was recently shown off let the user type in their intention. It almost works like the good-old command line of DOS or Unix, but with much more flexibility.

This is a keyboard analog of the “virtual intelligence” that would be an ideal interface. Instead of pointing and clicking, many users would like to talk to their computers in a (more or less) natural language and have the computer understand. The command lines of DOS or UNIX are rigid in their syntax, which did not correspond to natural language at all. Being able to type “Insert a picture” in Microsoft Word is much more natural. For that matter, there are many search engines striving to accurately reply to a request like “Give me census data for Illinois in 1997.”

While this will likely help users navigate the confusing Office interface, this screenshot shows just how many features there are. Type “insert” and get 205 command options? Page 1 of 23? This would take an incredibly long time to sort through this many options to find the desired one, which is not the best solution. Nonetheless, Search Commands is a decent first step, though.

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Tune Folder Push Sound

Posted by jasonwong in bad design, driving, language, physical ergonomics on February 23rd, 2008

Concerning my last post regarding hard vs. soft buttons, here is an example of labeling gone horribly wrong. This is from my car.

Civic Radio

What does TUNE FOLDER PUSH SOUND mean? This is both a dial AND a button. Let’s go through this:

  • Tune: In radio mode, you can twist the dial to tune the radio to a certain frequency
  • Folder: In MP3 disc mode, you can twist the dial to change folders. Presumably, your CD has its MP3s organized in folders by band, album, genre, etc.
  • Sound: You can push the button at the center of the dial to bring up the sound options such as the level of treble and bass.

So this dial/button serves three functions. The dial does both Tune and Folder and are mutually exclusive because you cannot be in Radio and MP3 Disc mode at the same time. The button does Sound and is accessible from any function. So the Honda engineers decided to use the least understandable label, TUNE FOLDER PUSH SOUND.

It’s understandable that you don’t want two dials and one button all separate on the dash, as that would lead to button overload. But this kind of mislabeling can only lead to confusion. One ideal solution may be technological: have the button face be a little screen that can change based on the current function. If you’re in radio mode, have it say TUNE. If you’re listening to an MP3 disc, have it say FOLDER.

This may sound futuristic, and it kind of is. But this technology is already starting to creep out. For example, the Optimus Maximus keyboard has keys with OLED (organic light emitting diodes) displays that can change depending on how you program it. This, sadly, is the best video demo that I could find. But I can imagine this sort of low-power display being used everywhere, including my Civic’s sound system:

By the way: the cost of this keyboard? Only $462.27.

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