I’ll bite on binary

I might even try delta and forcing function and exponential. Although I should probably know better, given how hopeless I am at math.

Ever publish something stupid, Sarah Cooper? I have, when I was writing product marketing copy for Apple. I’d written a page that extolled the PowerBook G4’s quantum increase in processing power.

This was ignorance on my part. My lapse amused Lars Hohmuth at Mathematica, who sent someone he knew at Apple a snarky email.

I know I’m no Einstein, but the snippet passed on to me made me feel like an idiot. It said: “Could someone please teach the guys at Apple elementary physics? A quantum is the smallest possible energy increment. So they just pulled the most minimal increase in processing power possible.”

Oops.

As you probably know, emails that point out mistakes in copy can create panic at some companies (it did at Google worked I was there).

It depends on who you work for, I guess. The typical knee-jerk reaction could range from emergency meetings to stern reprimands. It might even merit a hysterical outburst from a Chicken Little head of corporate PR.

But Apple was a different kind of company. Our product marketing managers were aware that web copy isn’t set in stone, and can be changed in an instant. We changed “quantum increase” to “quantum leap.” The PowerBook kept on selling like the proverbial hotcakes.

The point is that until Lars corrected me, I thought a quantum increase meant a huge increase. Many other people still think that. That’s because most of us don’t learn the meanings of words and phrases from a dictionary.

We get a sense of meaning from context. This works pretty good for the most part. But sometimes the sound of a phrase suggests the complete opposite of its true meaning.

Like, for example, when people say things like, “Debbie is gung ho to get started.” They’re using gung ho to mean that Debbie has a can-do attitude.
Fact is, gung ho was Chinese for “work together.” Evans Fordyce Carlson introduced it into the American lexicon in 1942. Carlson, an old China hand, made gung ho the motto of the 2nd Marine Raider battalion.

But the sound of gung ho (and its association with the marines) suggested a a more muscular meaning. And that is the meaning it has today in popular usage.

John Middleton Murry discussed this in The Problem of Style. Speaking at Brasenose College, Oxford, Murry noted how popular usage sets in motion the process he called smoothing the coinage of language.

Popular usage can change what a word means. Over time, some words and phrases can even take on the meaning of their antonyms.

You hear television news anchors mention towns getting decimated in a terrorist attack. They use the word decimate to convey the enormity of a massacre.

But the word decimate has its roots in the Latin decimare, meaning to take a tenth part from. The strict definition used to be “to kill one in every ten of.” But decimate sounds like it means a total massacre, and that’s the way most people use it.

Dictionaries have bowed to popular usage and list two definitions of the word decimate. The first is “to destroy and kill a large proportion of.” The second is its original meaning, “to kill one in every ten of.”

In any dispute over proper usage, the vernacular wins every time. But when you’re wrong, as I was with my Apple copy, the best thing to do is make the change and enjoy the rest of your life.

Rule of thumb: don’t stray too far ahead of popular usage. Otherwise your ad itself could become an issue and a distraction.

Few who are reading this are likely to recall the line “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”

The tagline provoked protest from academics when it first appeared. Sticklers for grammar savaged Young & Rubicam for using “like” instead of “as.”

Copy chief George Gribbin defended his campaign. That was the way most people spoke, he said, and he was right. And Winston cigarettes went onto kill more Americans than Hitler, Tojo and Ho Chi Minh.

I suppose one could say Y&R’s copy caused an exponential increase in the number of dead Americans. Heck, that might even make some people think I’m numerate.