Category: language

“Those three dots…”

On By JohnIn language, psychology, techLeave a comment

This is a PSA.

Okay, not true.

More of an annoyance.

When somebody says “those three dots” or “the little dots” some variation to describe a button that provides extended or additional information, there’s an actual effing name for it, and it’s not “the three dots”.

It’s called an ellipsis.

Used appropriately, the ellipsis in text indicates that a thought has trailed off or that it represents other, related ideas or thoughts. It could also be used to represent “more”.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop referring to it as “the three dots”.

It’s singular. It could be “an ellipsis” or sometimes “the ellipsis”. There’s even a unicode version:

What does it look like? Well…

You could even simplify it from three syllables down to one: call it “more”.

But it’s most certainly not called “those three little dots”.

Apple iDevice Plurals

On By JohnIn language, techLeave a comment

Car -> Cars

Phone -> Phones

Simple enough.

iPhone -> iPhones

iPad -> iPads

Okay, still following.

But it really gets cringe-worthy when people try to pluralize the Pro part of iPad Pro or the rather long-lived MacBook Pro by just tacking an S to the end of the name:

MacBook Pro -> MacBook Pros?

iPad Pro -> iPad Pros?

No, those don’t work because they aren’t multiple professionals – they’re multiple MacBooks.

iPad Pro Devices?

MacBook Pro MacBooks?

No, that won’t do. But there is a perfectly suitable solution:

MacBooks Pro

iPads Pro

That said, I expect that in some future we’ll see somebody with an absolutely massive collective of iPads Pro for which we’ll need a collective name. Maybe it’ll someday be called a Fanboi of iPads Pro.