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?" 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 /\ _____________________________________________________________________
--- Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> 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?"
Barry
I've noticed a variety of the converse (? obverse) viz., sign out, sign off, log off, & log out. Google shows 926K hits for signin. ===== Dominic Pinto e-m dominic.pinto@ieee.org M: +44 780 302-8268 Ph/Fax: +44 207 379-8341
40.4M Google hits for sign out ===== Dominic Pinto e-m dominic.pinto@ieee.org M: +44 780 302-8268 Ph/Fax: +44 207 379-8341
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
I feel like the hunch about "login" being an act and "logon" being a state is getting at something...I also seem to think of "log in" as being a more system-specific thing, lwhereas "log on" is more general. Or there's some kind of nuance about the appropriateness of the two, depending on what exactly you're doing/using. As in, the library computers at my university say "Log in using your userID." I "log in" to my email, "log in" to a class instructional homepage, and likewise "log out" from all of them. Whereas my computer at home is "logged on" to the internet (as in "connected"), but my grandma, who has never touched a computer, is definitely not "logged on." Like, "logging in" is to a specific application, which requires a password or something, whereas "logging on" is to the internet or larger system in general. "I logged on to LJ, but I didn't log in." Then again, I just checked the very same library computer which told me to "log in," and it also says on the desktop "Please remember to log off!!" I guess in/out and on/off are not consistently paired. ??? Lauren PS - Could this be anything like the (describing an IRL situation) "waiting in line" vs. "waiting on line" variation? English prepositions confused about spatial metaphors? On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 12:00:50 -0500 Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca> 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?"
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 /\ _____________________________________________________________________
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---- Lauren Squires Linguistics Program University of Virginia *** http://polyglotconspiracy.net
--- Lauren Squires <squires@virginia.edu> wrote:
I feel like the hunch about "login" being an act and
"logon" being a state is getting at something... <snip>
??? Lauren
PS - Could this be anything like the (describing an IRL situation) "waiting in line" vs. "waiting on line" variation? English prepositions confused about spatial metaphors?
At the risk of assisting in a diversion, English variations include waiting in a queue - as in documents waiting in a print queue. My computer may be on line, but probably not in line or in a line. ===== Dominic Pinto e-m dominic.pinto@ieee.org M: +44 780 302-8268 Ph/Fax: +44 207 379-8341
participants (4)
-
Barry Wellman -
Dominic Pinto -
Lauren Squires -
Scott A. Golder