I've noticed a peculiar trend around Microsoft lately. We seem to be inventing our own language. I was having a laugh about this with David last night where we had examples such as;

"TALKING TO"...

When did it become ok for people to say "Can you TALK TO Windows Server 2008" whereas what they actually mean is "Can you TALK ABOUT Windows Server 2008".

"THE WHOLE PIECE"...

What is this thing with "the piece"? I'm constantly hearing this phrase of "We need to look at this across THE PIECE" or "THE WHOLE PIECE". Piece of what, exactly?

"IS THAT AN OK ASK?"

What's this thing with the word "ASK"? People have started saying "Is travelling to the Moon too much of an ASK for you?". What's that about? What happened to poor, old "REQUEST?"

I have an idea that someone, somewhere is coming up with this weird way of abusing words and slowly slipping them into their dialogue as a way of seeing which other people they can trick into adopting them.

I've a feeling that it might be Martin - I asked him what he'd been up to recently and he came up with;

"Yesterday I did a tough travel to Leeds, where I did an interesting 'stand and speak' with a number of devs.  They did a great evaluation with which I'm doing a share now".

:-)

If you've got any of these yourself that you'd like to contribute then ping me a mail and I'll add them in.

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Posted Fri, Oct 12 2007 3:46 AM by mtaulty