Barry Wellman wrote:
It could be said that "login" is the act of connecting while "logon" is the state of being connected. Yet, I belive the 2 words are often used interchangeably, as in "Is Nancy logged in?"
To add to Barry's data: log in 39.3M 75.1% log on 13.0M log into 3.7M 75.5% log onto 1.2M login to 16.8M 95.5% logon to 0.8M logging in 5.0M 79.4% logging on 1.3M The "in" variety wins by a huge margin in each case. This is really interesting, since "on the internet" and "going online" are universal ("going inline" gets ~ 200 ghits. perhaps a typo). Perhaps this usage is analogizing from "on television" and "on the radio." My question for you, Barry, is standardize _for whom_? The research literature? The descriptivist in me would argue for the "in" varieties, given their overwhelming popularity in usage. I can't think of a reason to standardize on anything else. An interesting related topic: Wired no longer capitalizes "Internet", as of last August. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html Scott ----- Scott A. Golder golder@media.mit.edu http://www.media.mit.edu/~golder 617.877.9230