Barry, I worked in the computer industry for a number of years and believe that "log in" is used the most. It's also metaphorically consistent with the dimensionality of cyberspace, if one accepts Gibson's term. But, here's a hypothetical differentiator. Accessing the Internet is a 2-stage process: first, firing up your PC, and then connecting it to the Net. The first might be a "log on", which is consistent with the old term of "booting up", a metaphor for pulling on boots by tugging on the leather loop sometimes placed at the back for that purpose. So, you log on to your computer, as you would pull on your boots. Once on your computer, you connect to the Internet (unless you're always connected) by logging in to your access system. Likewise, accessing any password-protected website is a matter of getting "in", as into a building. This difference has no basis in reality, except in my imagination, but it makes sense to me....Alex Kuskis ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barry Wellman" <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> To: "aoir list" <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 11:54 AM Subject: [Air-l] login/logon
Which is the preferred usage: "login" or "logon". For my paper writing, I'd like to standardize on one.
Google shows: "login": 218 Million hits "logon": 6.7 Million hits
so there is a 30:1 preference for login vs. logon. But I'd love to hear some more debate.
Barry _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 To network is to live; to live is to network () ASCII ribbon campaign -- don't use HTML email /\ _____________________________________________________________________