'W' Considered Harmful

http://runningwithdata.com/post/3576752158/w

by santigepigon • 13 years ago

34 46 13 years ago

plorkyeran• 13 years ago

It has always annoyed me that "world wide web" is significantly faster to say than "www".

Zenst4• 13 years ago

Yes but is great fun seeing people say out web address's. Ah the early days when they spelt out the http:// part as well.

If it was realy a bother though somebody would of pulled a Prince and called it squiggle.

ALl this though is based upon English use of the letter W, sure other languages have there own quirks and idiosims.

Torn2• 13 years ago

* Would have pulled a Prince

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

Personally I try to make most of my servers work without the www. part, it's also a hassle to type.

dynofuz2• 13 years ago

thats why i just say dub dub dub for www. There couldnt be a worse standard subdomain. Also great article.. if you are interested in measuring words and speech, we should talk ;)

promoCode2• 13 years ago

Actually, I hold the opposite opinion, and there are a few reasons why I think "www" is probably the best choice.

1. Communicating it by phone or radio is unmistakable. Have you ever had to spell things out for people over the phone? It's awful, even when using the NATO phonetic alphabet. Abandon all hope if you have to relay case sensitive camel-case directory paths, class names or passwords. This is why I always encourage the use of underscores, particularly with table names. EM-AS-IN-MARE-EE-UNN-DER-SCORE-PEE-AS-IN-PAUL over the phone just flows, when the person on the other end tries to reconstruct your words, but having to say CAP-EE-TAL-BEE-AS-IN-BOY-LOW-ERR-CASE-VEE-AS-IN-VIC-TOR feels as cumbersome as being a Cherokee code talker, and you repeat yourself like five times, restarting in the middle, pausing, and then repeating end-to-end, the same confusing sequences of letters, over and over again. WAIT, ALL CAPITAL??? NO. WHICH IS LOWER-CASE??? ALL ONE WORD OR WITH SPACES??? WHAT'S A KUMQUAT???

2. It's better than EIGHTCH-TEE-TEE-PEE-KOH-LONN-SLASH-SLASH

3. The best defaults are always optional, changable things that no one wants for themselves.

4. It's highly specific and unique to the internet. And even the most inept people can tell the difference between an e-mail address and a website, if you include the dub dub dub subdomain as an optional prefix. This is invaluable, when trying to inform non-technical people about your new thing on the interwebs. (..."oh, just go to www.intarderp.ly.io" sparks less confusion in the uninitiated than "intarderp.ly.io" might)

libria• 13 years ago

You may want to join this movement: http://www.www.extra-www.org

maaku2• 13 years ago

Save a syllable: trip-dub.

olefoo• 13 years ago

Which sounds like it could be a rather appealing genre of music.

Wub-wub-Wub-wub in the sky with diamonds.

mappum• 13 years ago

Let's make a movement to call W "wub". It uses its own sound, it is one syllable, and it sounds like "dub" (as in "double U"). As a bonus side effect, "www" will sound like dubstep.

dynofuz2• 13 years ago

i love it. very easy transition from dub dub dub

fein• 13 years ago

Can this be like Soda vs Pop?

We can get the dubs and wubs together and have a rave.

Torn2• 13 years ago

I think this fits better than 'dub dub dub' for web addresses

iv_08• 13 years ago

Just give it a more efficient name. In German it's referred to as [veː].

ulfw• 13 years ago

German efficiency at work

alecdbrooks• 13 years ago

German has its own three-syllable letter: Y. It's pronounced similar to "ipsilon."

eru• 13 years ago

That's more or less already the pronounciaton for V in English.

effn• 13 years ago

We do this in Sweden too. WWW is pronounced VVV and the car manufacturer is pronounced BMV.

bcoates• 13 years ago

the only letter whose name doesn’t include the sound it makes

I'm trying to figure out if the author pronounces H with a Tom Brokaw "haitch" or an Elvis Presley "aitchuhh".

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

And, of course, w's name does contain one of the vowel sounds that w forms (the long u), just like y's does (the long i). Neither of those letters name contains their own consonant sound.

jeorgun• 13 years ago

Wait, when does 'w' make the sound [u] (as opposed to [w] or [ʊ])?

KamiCrit• 13 years ago

Who would worry with 'W'?

troymc• 13 years ago

The National Association Of W Lovers is not going to be happy about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkiCTDcV51k

freiheit• 13 years ago

Well, aren't they always unhappy about something, anyways?

rcthompson• 13 years ago

Wait a minute, there are significant backward-compatibility concerns to be addressed before we shorten the pronunciation of "W". How will we fill the extra two syllables in the ABC song?

maaku2• 13 years ago

Maybe we can enunciate L-M-N-O-P instead of running them all together?

jaibot• 13 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0r8egBvWRM&feature=youtube_...

bitwize• 13 years ago

"wubba wubba wubba dot google dot com"

Also, the Latin alphabet is used by many languages, in which other letters have more than one syllable: off the top of my head, Spanish has many (not to mention things they count as letters that we don't), and French has i grec for y.

gordaco• 13 years ago

F, H, J, L, M, N, Ñ, R, S, V, W, X, Y, Z (and Y is also i griega here). Those are the letters whose name has more than one syllable: more than half of them. In particular, W has four syllables (U-ve do-ble). So please stop whining, English speakers all over the world :).

On a side note, the article's comments mention something very important: the "www" didn't originate in an English-speaking country, so it's not that is "harmful" because someone didn't think it properly; instead, it's "harmful" in English because it just wasn't thought with that language in mind.

ddeck• 13 years ago

This makes me wonder how confusing it must be for Bassant's Removals & Storage to explain their website URL over the phone...[1]

[1] http://www.doubleyoudoubleyoudoubleyou.com/

teddyh• 13 years ago

Or slashdot.

Hellenion• 13 years ago

What's more is that 'W' (and 'M') mess up every compact monospaced font.

gojomo• 13 years ago

…the abbreviation www requires nine syllables to say…

Not if you regroup the us to 'sextuple-u'.

batbomb• 13 years ago

3 yew squared

troels4• 13 years ago

That would be nine.

'W' Considered Harmful

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