phil ringnalda

You know, somebody gave me the smackdown on deprecated vs depreciated back in 1999 and I am still grateful.

I’m with you, chief.

How can so many people who are involved with computer software, where individual characters and even bits matter, be so utterly blind to the fact that they are throwing an extra vowel into a word, turning it into another word?

Almost as bad as when they swap one vowel for another, turning it into another word?

when I get there to meat you

I agree with your sentiments, though – it’s the same for so many parts of language though. People just don’t seem to want to take the time to learn for themselves – they hear someone use a word and just assume that person was using it properly. Oh well, a good rant about it usually helps :).

Don’t shoot the wannabees

At least they didn’t use the word ”defecated” Hmmm, maybe that would have been more fitting.

You might be interested in the following from Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:

deprecate; depreciate.

The first of these has increasingly encroached on the figurative senses of the second, while the second has retreated into financial contexts. ”Deprecate” means ”to disapprove earnestly” — e.g.: ”There must be a proper balance between urban and rural, industrial and agricultural development. And a spirit of excessive tolerance is to be deprecated.” Jonathan Romney, ”Apollo 13,” New Statesman & Society, 22 Sept. 1995, at 29.

”Depreciate,” transitively, means ”to belittle, disparage”; and intransitively, ”to fall in value” (used in reference to assets or investments). The phrase ”self-deprecating” is, literally speaking, a virtual impossibility, except perhaps for those suffering from extreme neuroses. Thus ”self-depreciating,” with ”depreciate” in its transitive sense, has historically been viewed as the correct phrase — e.g.: ”Sadly, Grizzard did not have the self-depreciating humor of a Jeff Foxworthy, the self-proclaimed redneck comedian.” Bill McClellan, ”If Southern Writer Were Judging the Games, What Would His Verdict Be?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 July 1996, at B1.

Unfortunately, though, the form ”self-deprecating” — despite its mistaken origins — is now 50 times as common in print as ”self-depreciating.” Speakers of American English routinely use ”self-deprecating.” However grudgingly, we must accord to it the status of standard English — e.g.:”Milken doesn’t drive himself much anymore, but he has a self-deprecating explanation for why that’s the case: He says he used to do so many things while driving that he kept having collisions.” Jeanie Russell Kasindorf, ”What to Make of Mike,” Fortune, 30 Sept. 1996, at 86.

BTW, Garner’s Modern American Usage is a handy book to have within arm’s reach.

when I get there to meat you.

Knowing your genius I assume that was a clever pun that had something to do with beatings involving a baseball bat.

When I saw the title of this post in my feed reader I clicked instantly, without bothering to scan the article in the feed, because I was so certain there must be something wrong that would cause you to spell deprecated incorrectly in a headline. I was prepared, fingers at the ready, to fire off a friendly, ”sorry, you misspelled ’deprecated’” comment.

I am so relieved.

[...] Phil Ringnalda grinds his teeth when people say depreciated instead of deprecated. I know how he feels. The one that bothers me is hearing people say orientated instead of oriented, as in ”object orientated.” [...]

Well at some point in history popup comments were thought, hard though it maybe be to conceive of, to be a good idea. Thankfully they’ve been depreciated to the point where they’re all but extinct.

Hmmm… I tried, but it still doesn’t scan.

I was going to ding you for “incompetant”, but then I saw “meat you”, and now I’m wondering whether you simply wrote this at 4am in the morning or are actually being facetious.

I apprecate your rant, irregardless of tool mentioned.

The fact that we’re able to successfully survive encounters with most slips and variations of spelling, usage, style, and grammar just makes me grateful for the ultra-liberal language parsers in our heads, to echo something I said in one of Mark Pilgrim’s roiling comment threads about his copy editor a long time ago.

But you’ll be happy to know that I (and, judging by this post, maybe others) reported the misspelling to Six Apart at the end of August, and it’ll be fixed in the next release.

Yes, it is rather frustrating, but please keep in mind that a lot of people suffer from very light to normal dyslexia, and are possibly making such mistakes unintentionally while still knowing that it is deprecated.

I blame the fact that ’deprecated’ isn’t a word that’s spoken much, and so most people first encounter it in the written form. As our eyes never read every letter when reading, it’s easy to mis-read deprecated as the more-commonly-used ’depreciated’, which, as it has a similar enough meaning, usually fits in the context, it becomes an easy mistake to make.

So, more people using the word ’deprecated’ in everyday speech would go a long way to improving the problem…

OMFG! I’m motified we shipped something with ”deprecated” spelled incorrectly… as 3-time spelling bee champion of my junior high school, I take it as a personal affront. (On the other hand, we’re proud to have a number of people with various reading/writing problems on our staff, as we’ve got dyslexics succeeding in being in senior management, on our board of directors, and in departments like user experience/design. So I’m trying to be less of a spelling nazi these days.)

Anyway, to the issue at hand. First, I will blame Jay Allen. It’s Jay’s fault, ha ha! Second, I will try to get this fixed. Thanks for pointing it out, and please be sensitive to our horrible shame.

I like how Anil did not mention the employment of dyslexics in the programming department. ;)

Maybe I should be ”motified” but I’m not…

I meant mortified! That’s a typo! No fair!

You must be joking about deprecated vs depreciated. They mean essentially the same thing. If anything depreciated is closer in meaning to the current usage. Honestly, has anyone every been confused by using one or then other almost identical word? Only anal jargon freaks care much about things like this.

Anil is right to blame me, but the thing I can’t figure out is that I too am annoyed when people mix up deprecated and depreciated, so believe me, I know the difference.

All I can say, in my defense, is that we were pulling some pretty damn late nights putting the finishing touches on 3.2. Perhaps I was bleary-eyed.

But in either case, I hear you. Thank you for making me annoy myself.

Oh, by the way, now that you’re on WordPress, how about using your mad programming skillz to finally give that piece of software a frigging PREVIEW button?

There are worse things. I heard some people talking about polygone Klingeltöne, which is German for polygonal ringtones, as opposed to the more familiar and still annoying polyphone=polyphonic ringtones. I really like to hear (or see?) one of those. There are a lot out there.

I was right there with you , until you wrote ”…when I get there to MEAT you.” Whoops. Kinda blows your righteous attitude.