Tuesday, March 06, 2007

On Proper Use of English

While my mind was entering a virtual screen-saver (yes, oddly enough my mind seems to run a GUI over its CLI interface) I overheard a conversation in the next cubicle. A project manager said, "...and then we give it to the engineers for solutioning". I started to think about how often I'd heard that expression and quickly realized the count was quite high.

Shortly after that exciting revelation (much more exciting than the status bar I watched during an in-progress installation) I recalled another expression I'm finding has become prevalent on our site: The act of "dialoguing". I'm not completely sure of the spelling of this colloquialism, but I'm hearing it all the time.

If I'm understanding them correctly, my job as an engineer entails dialoguing with customers to gain requirements which I can use in the solutioning process. Ain't that it?

From the Merriam Webster Dictionary, we learn that "solution" is actually a noun. Just to remove any ambiguity from my position on this matter, let me also state that a noun in this scenario cannot moonlight as a verb and still retain its dignity.

Continuing on our lexical journey, the MW Dictionary also has an entry for dialogue. It's simply amazing to find such an artifact considering how few people have been able to study this elusive part of speech. But, in the interest of open sharing of knowledge I'd like to share what it contains. Dialog is also a noun. Amazing!

Having solved this perplexing grammar mystery I can now return to designing a solution to the problem of how to virtualize our Directory Service. I hope you've enjoyed this dialogue.

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