Dept. of Minor Observations
A repository of bulletins, field reports, working papers, and notices concerning small thoughts, odd details, internet archaeology, abandoned drafts, and gentle critiques of modern digital culture. Items are classified, stamped, and filed accordingly.
Notice regarding the word "Seamless"
The Department wishes to formally register its concern with the continued use of the word "seamless" in product documentation, marketing materials and "compulsory" training.
Upon investigation, the Department has found no product, integration, or experience that has been, in any clearly verifiable sense, seamless. The word is used in all cases as aspirational language, functioning less as description and more as institutional prayer.
The Department does not object to prayer. It objects to prayer being mistaken for a product specification.
This notice is now filed. No further action is anticipated.
Notice to readers of "Best Practices" documentation
The Department has observed that the phrase "best practice" appears with high frequency in technical documentation, style guides and internal memos.
Readers are advised that this phrase reliably indicates one of the following:
1. Practices that were considered reasonable by the author at the time of writing.
2. Practices that were favoured at the author's previous employer.
3. Practices that were immediately adopted to avoid a specific past incident that no one wishes to discuss.
4. No specific practice at all, but written with a strong conviction that there ought to be one.
The Department recommends asking which of the above choices applies before adopting the practice in question.
Notice on the Retirement of Blinking Text
The Department formally acknowledges the passing of the <blink> tag, deprecated by the major browsers in 2013 and removed entirely in Firefox 23.0.
The blink tag was widely condemned as an accessibility hazard, a visual irritant and a crime against aesthetics. These criticisms were entirely founded and correct. We do not mourn the blink tag.
The Department notes, however, that it was the only HTML element that communicated urgency without any form of irony. Everything that has replaced it communicates urgency with considerably more subtlety and considerably more effectiveness. Whether this is an improvement is a question the Department has left open.
Filed. No revisitation planned.
Notice on the redundancy of "ATM Machine"
The phrase "ATM machine" contains the word "machine" twice, as ATM
stands for Automated Teller Machine. Similarly: "PIN number,"
"ISBN number," "LCD display," "GPS system," and "HIV virus" all
contain their final word twice, already embedded in their acronym.
These represent RAS syndromes — Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndromes.
A category that is suitable named with the
redundancy that it describes.
The Department has no recommendation. Language accommodates its own
contradictions with remarkable patience, and the Department has learned
to extend the same courtesy. Filed with no further comment.
On the persistence of the fax number
A significant number of institutional, medical, and legal forms still
contain a field for a fax number. The fax machine has not been common
in domestic use for over two decades. Many, if not most, offices no longer own one.
Yet the field remains. In some places, a fax number is even legally required
for certain submissions. In others, the form was designed when fax
numbers were common and has not been updated because the form still works,
in the sense that all the other fields still apply.
The Department observes how long administrative forms can outlast the
technologies they were designed to accommodate with a high degree of regularity.
The field persists as a kind of fossil — evidence of an earlier
environment, preserved in the sediment of a PDF that no one has
opened to edit since 2009.
Revised Notice: On "Unlimited"
Revised following the acquisition of new evidence.
The Department's original draft held that "unlimited," as used in
subscription services, telecommunications contracts and buffet
restaurants was plainly false. This position has been
moderated.
The revised position sees that "unlimited" in commercial contexts typically means
"limited in ways that will not affect most people most of the time."
It is a statistical claim masquerading as an absolute one. The limit
exists. It is there. It has been set above the threshold of "normal" use and therefore,
practically speaking, not encountered.
The Department's concern was with the word. The Department now
acknowledges that the word is doing some real work. It is simply not
doing the work that the word usually does. This distinction is small
enough that most people will never notice it, which is exactly the point.
Notice on the use of the word "Journey"
The Department formally registers its observations on the word "journey"
in its application to the act of purchasing software, completing an onboarding
form or selecting a subscription tier.
A journey implies distance, difficulty and a possibility of never
returning. The Department does not dispute that enterprise procurement
can be difficult. It disputes that difficulty of this kind constitutes
a journey in any useful meaningful sense of the word.
The Department suggests "procedure", "process," "experience," and, where
appropriate, "ordeal."
Notice regarding the ellipsis in menu design
The Department draws attention to a convention so established it has
become invisible to scrutiny. The ellipsis following a menu item.
"Save As…" means this action requires further information before it
can proceed. "Save" means the action will happen now. The ellipsis is
a small promise of more beyond. That you will
be consulted further before it does something useful.
The convention is old, precise, and almost entirely ignored by software
produced in the last fifteen years, where "Delete" and "Delete…" are
treated as interchangeable and the difference between acting and
asking has been quietly retired.
Filed. The Department does not expect further improvement in the situation.
On the persistence of the "Any Key"
The instruction "press any key to continue" was common in software of
the 1980s and 1990s. The "any key" does not exist as a labelled key on
any keyboard produced before or since.
The instruction persisted for decades. People would press Enter, or Space,
or sometimes A, having decided that A was close enough to "any." The
instruction was technically correct and practically confusing and
nobody changed it because it worked.
The Department notes this as a case study in interface language that
is accurate without being in any way helpful, and wonders how many such cases
remain in current production systems, unexamined because they also,
broadly, work.