Ok, I promised that my next post wouldn’t be about the Beeb. Sorry.
Just wondering if anyone else finds it annoying to be told to ‘log on’ to a website. The BBC do it all the time. Earlier this summer there was a particularly grating little segment they kept playing on South East Today (be thankful, Brightonians, you still get the news for the Isle of Wight don’t you?). One of the reporters was talking to camera, proffering her laptop and explaining how you can ‘log on’ to the programme website and watch the latest edition again.
Now, I’m prepared to be proved wrong by someone more technical than I am, but isn’t this embarrassing-granddad-speak? You may ‘log on’ to your computer. But then you just ‘visit’ or ‘go to’ any particular website, don’t you?
I hadn’t thought about this for a while, but then today someone on TV (BBC News 24, I think) told me to ‘log on’ to their website. It made me go all Charlie Brooker.
I suggest a new rule to get this sorted out: every time a newsreader tells a viewer to ‘log on’ incorrectly, they are forced to ‘log on’ to the South East Today website and watch yesterday’s tedious offering again. That’ll learn ‘em.
Ben’s just forwarded me this Penny Arcade cartoon.
Thanks, I guess, to Handolio for this, from the Mirror.co.uk (I refuse to reproduce the shouting) about page:
“MIRROR.CO.UK is the online edition of The Daily Mirror, Britain’s brightest tabloid newspaper.
Log on for the best news, sport and showbiz stories from the paper and the latest breaking news.”