I can be a bit pedantic at times, but I do my best not to because I know that I make frequent mistakes as well. In many cases, I just have to accept that some of the “wrong” words that I hear are perfectly acceptable. Phrases like “I could care less” aren’t technically meaningful, but we all know what is intended with those words.
In marketing, there are a few that I’ve learned to just let go.
Someone may ask for “marketing” help, when they really just need “promotion” or “sales” help. Those are all different things, but they’re close to enough to get everyone pointed in the same direction as the strategy is laid out.
Another is “font” versus “typeface”. If you say that you like the Helvetica “font”, that’s not really a thing. Helvetica is a typeface, and your use of it and the variation within that typeface, such as “bold”, makes it a “font”. Again, though, if someone says “I really like that font“, I can appreciate that they’re referring to the typeface and we move forward.
Other’s I’m a little less lenient about, because they can potentially cause confusion. For example, every image on a website should have “alt text” behind it to help with vision-impaired users. Some choose to call them “alt tags” instead, but that can lead to other confusion as I laid out here a few years ago.
Or when speaking a website address out loud, the word “backslash” just shouldn’t be said. All of the slashes in a website address are “forward slashes” or just a “slash” for short. You can remember this by the way the slash is leaning; if you look at the address of this page, you’ll see some slashes leaning forward (not back) like this “/”.
Where am I wrong?
All of this makes me wonder what things I say that are incorrect in other industries. I have no doubt that I mess up some words when talking to our HVAC folks or I’m getting service done on my car. Those folks always show grace to me in those situations, so I do my best to pass that grace along to others.
Just don’t say backslash.
