What do you mean, it's half past ten on Friday morning? Not if I say it isn't.
I am cracking slightly under the various things I have to do. In an exchange of emails last night, the final one to me ended 'see you tomorrow morning." I replied to the rest of the mail, then added "what's happening tomorrow morning?" before remembering, fortunately before sending it, that I'd asked for the meeting at 8.30. I asked for it during the afternoon. This high level of organisation lark isn't really for me. Not in an ongoing fashion, at any rate, though I can jump to it in a crisis.
The Sage's computer skills are coming on no end and he confidently deals with all his own emails now. He did have a tendency to write them to himself or draft and not send, but this has been dealt with by giving him a googlemail account instead of his hotmail one (I do not use the address that comes with the provider in case we change; you cannot persuade people to delete an old email address) - gmail has a far easier layout to understand. However, a few minutes ago, he asked me for someone's address. "Just start putting his name in and it'll come up from your address list," I advised. A few minutes later I went to check ... he'd googled him instead. I explained again the difference between googling, looking up an address or phone number, and emailing, and advised him again to use the correct word each time. Every time he wants me to look up a phone number, he asks me to google it and thinks I'm no end pedantic when I ask if he wants me to look on BT. But if you say it correctly you're more likely to do the right thing automatically. Like, if you mispronounce a word you are less likely to remember how to spell it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
To be fair, 'googling' has become almost a general term for 'looking up on the internet'.
I think that it has become the general term for looking up on the internet with a search engine. I don't think it's the normal term for checking your contact list for an email address, or looking on a specific website for which you have the URL.
Ah well, we younger people are much more loose in our use of language.
Z, that paragraph confused me, and I'm 2 years younger than you, at 43.
The Sage is 74, Dave. I hadn't put you in his generation, but I stand corrected.
I may be hopelessly old-fashioned, Simon, but when I start an email, I type in the address box the first letter or two of a name and their email address pops up. I don't call that googling, but apparently Dave does. Dave and the Sage are a lot older than we are, however.
'Every time he wants me to look up a phone number, he asks me to google it'.
Which is precisely what I do. I go into Google (captial G, the actual site) and type in 'phone numbers' to take me to a site (such as BT) where I can find it - or if I have such a site already bookmarked I'll google (small g, meaning 'to search on the internet') it.
Well, I don't, because I go to Safari, where BT.com is one of the twelve that comes on the screen. I click on it and search within it. I originally used a search engine to find the site but then permanently "pinned' it to the screen.
Of course, use whatever term you want, because you understand the process it doesn't matter. The Sage has only been working independently with a computer for a short time, so differentiation between different tasks is far more help to him. So, I'll say google the website and then search within it.
And, in writing an email to someone, surely you don't say you're googling their address when you're just looking within your own email address list? Though you're welcome to, obv.
Oh, now I see. Starting to type an email addy (as we young people call them) isn't googling, for sure, it's simply using the email software as it was designed to be used.
At work I often Google addresses and phone numbers, not by first accessing an online phone book but just by googling the name of the company or individual.
I knew what you were talking about right off. On my computer I click on 'gmail' in my 'bookmarks' then click on 'contact list' then typing in the first letter of the name of the person that I want to email brings up all the email addresses of my contacts whose name starts with that letter. I click on the one I want and Wah lah! No Googling necessary. Must be a girl thing#)
Post a Comment