General Interest

• Should Professional Conferences Be Held at Resorts?—Business before pleasure

• Guru wisdom note: Innumeracy in Computer Technology

• The Customer Is Always Right (Always?)—Vendor "help" might learn from century-old merchants.

• How Do I Get to the Meeting?—Some professional organizations are hostile to the environment.

• Cultural note: The End of Sexism in Publishing?

• Circuit City Out of Business—A well-deserved failure! Who's next?

• Silly Coinage Burdens Everyday Commerce—Americans are stuck with obsolete currency denominations.

• Do Not Reply to This Message—E-mail etiquette continues to deteriorate.

• Area Code Hell -- American telephone companies have made a mess that annoys millions.

• Microsoft Monopoly Power -- Did Windows force Office upon us, or was it the other way around?

• E-mail Etiquette Badly Lacking -- Why is ordinary courtesy declining in the business world?

• Should Western I.S. Professionals Be Doing More to Help Russia? -- This seemed like a good idea in 1992, but Russia's collapse quickly rendered it obsolete. Is the time approaching to consider again pursuing these opportunities?

• Our Time is More Valuable than Yours -- Online subscription renewals getting more and more burdensome.

• Avoiding local idioms—Americans participating in international meetings should stop using baseball metaphors and popular culture slang.

• "Exponential Increases" Growing Exponentially!—misuses of a precise term

• All Lists Are Ordered!—a common error among writers on HTML

• Stop Reporting "Glitches"—Another overused and inaccurate media term. They're bugs or errors!

• E-nough Already!—Cute terminology is wearing thin.

• Analyzing and Documenting Our Processeez—A common mispronunciation irritates when it's repeated.

• Migrate is not a transitive verb"—One dictionary sanctions a growing misusage.

• I'm Not Gonna Unless I Gotta!—Puzzling growth in dialectical writing in books and journals.

• Who Was That Suspicious Suspect?—two peculiar misusages by broadcasters

• Geek Is Now a Verb!—Demeaning characterizations continue to expand into new areas.

• Wide-area LANs and writable CD-ROMs—Oxymorons, redundancies, and contradictions in I.T. terminology.

• Can I Take a Bath in the Bathroom?—An American euphemism confuses.

• There's a Nap for That!—another confusing and unnecessary slang term.

• The inconsistent article—How can we explain the rule when there isn't any?

• Power Point: the 21st Century Kleenex— Confusing readers while promoting Microsoft products.

Deceptive business practices

(Is there any other kind?)

• Credit Card Gouging Grows — Is your credit-card company your adversary?

• The Price is Not Right — Deceptive pricing dominates retailing.

• What Ever Happened to List Price — Further notes on decpetive pricing in the Christmass shopping season.