My erstwhile[*] PC Computing colleague John Montgomery, now at Microsoft, has a wonderful eulogy on words that the PC industry, led by Microsoft, has killed. One of my favorites:
Community. A word now utterly without meaning, community used to be have connotations of people connecting with other people who have like interests. Now it means a Web site. I’m hoping this one will be able to be reborn.
The whole thing is worth reading, especially if you’re a PC marketing type wondering how not to debase the English language any further. It’s also entertaining if you’re a once or former editor or a high-tech blogger desperately trying to avoid writing like a hack.
[*] Alas, the word erstwhile is hopelessly misused these days. It properly means “in the past” or “former” but is all too often confused with esteemed. John happens to be both.
As an aside… Back when the Internets were just a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, I wrote an essay on Microspeak, the curious blend of jargon, slang, and groupthink that characterizes conversation around Redmond. It’s lost to the ages, but a bit of Googling turned up this mid-1990s-vintage page that has a lot of the same material.
If you spend any amount of time at Microsoft, you’ve probably noticed that many Softies, when asked a question, begin their answer with “So…” What’s up with that?
Ed Bott 
I think you’re confusing death with evolution. Listening to a Microsoftie restyle English can be as entertaining as a Southerner’s “nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs” similes. Most Microsoft language travesties will fade as quickly as Microsoft Bob, they’re just fads like CB radio and pet rocks. As long as we understand each other it’s all good; we don’t need a French-style language police to pass judgement on our communications.
John’s blog and your blog about it obviously point in one direction as to the loss of the meaning of certain words, but there’s another whole tech segment which I believe has done far worse than just skewer the meaning of a few choice words.
I find the damage to literacy done by instant messaging much more offensive than redefining or de-defining a few words. I’m appalled to read blog entries or comments to such entries that appear to be written in some ancient hieroglyphic language, but in fact are just phonetic shortcuts. If they were used in text messaging, it would be one thing, but this stuff is becoming pervasive into every form of written communication. If the evolution of text messaging continues, I fear that sometime in the next decade, we’ll all be reduced to a series of monosyllables, single letter expressions and some variants of the happy face.
Its / It’s
Used interchangeably by the tech “community.”
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/its.html
If you have a jaundiced view of Microsoft “Communities” then you should take a look at the worldwide SBS Community.
Not only does this Community have websites and blogs, people actually meet face-to-face. I know fellow SBSers from all over the UK and Ireland, the US and Australia and have met many of them.
Community can still mean Community. You just have to make it happen.
I think this is the definitive article on the topic:
http://www.around.com/microspeak.html
Oddly enough, it was written years ago, but it’s still fresh today.
D
Different beast, Dennis. That’s a time-capsule look at the way Microsoft writes PR releases in its own happy-talk way. It’s not that different from the way other big corporations – including the Bush Administration – practice spin control.
What I’m talking about is the weird jargon that ‘Softies use among themselves. It’s evolved over time, but it’s still an odd dialect.