Pre-Archaic Industrial Jargon

[Dan Goncharoff]

Adobe Acrobat and other programs refer to "typewriter mode".
DanG


On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Pre-Archaic Industrial Jargon
>
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>
> So an address book is still an address book; all that is different is =
> how the information in it is stored.
>
> It seems misleading to say that Amazon is attempting to "shift the =
> semantics of the term "book"--they are just responding to the subreption =
> that has already taken place. Remember that a book was once far =
> different from the bound volumes that the term came to be used for in =
> the modern era. (And, for my grandfather, a magazine was also a book, =
> though that seems somewhat anachronistic to me today.)
> =20
> An "album" of musical recordings downloaded to an iPod is still an =
> "album," even if it is not a thing made of vinyl. On the other hand, =
> referring to it as a "record" seems as anachronistic as it would be to =
> refer to a computer as a typewriter.
>
> On Mar 12, 2012, at 10:20 AM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>
> > I think "address book" has been redefined by some users to correspond
> > to an electronic database of addresses and other information. This
> > switch began years ago. Perhaps it was triggered by the "address book"
> > designation used in email programs.
> >=20
> > The advertising copy at Amazon.com for the Kindle reader attempts to
> > shift the semantics of the term "book" so that it refers to what was
> > recently called an "electronic book", "e-book", or "ebook". More
> > precisely, the text attempts to shift the definition of "book" so that
> > it corresponds to a proprietary Kindle-formatted electronic book.
>
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