Scripting News: English phrases everywhere

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

English phrases everywhere

Most Italians don't speak English, not many Americans speak Italian, and most of us are okay. Get into a cab, wave hands, smile, use your fingers for numbers, make big hand gestures, smile some more. You can get by.

But everywhere you look, on billboards, ads on bus stops, store signs, radio programming, there are little snippets of English everywhere. When I see this, I say the words out loud to the cabbie, with a smile, and say English! And I get back a puzzled look. I'm not sure they see that it is English.

Remember that next time someone says you have to use a symbol in a program UI, instead of words or an acronym, because people around the world won't understand little phrases in English. It doesn't seem to be true.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:50 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

May Jul