Author Topic: login/logon  (Read 3341 times)

mkenuk

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login/logon
« on: September 09, 2017, 09:09:02 PM »
re the recent gondolier game.

I've a feeling I may have asked this before, in which case I apologise, but can someone tell me why, in Chi, login is common, and logon is rare.

And what about logout, which I'm looking at on the menu at this very moment?

Alan W

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2017, 08:17:13 PM »
There is an outstanding request, from rhino, to make logon common. The suggestion was made in 2014 and endorsed by you at the time, MK.

My comments at the time login was made common, but not logon, are here. As this was just over 8 years ago it might be time to review the situation. I'll try to get on to it before too long.

Over and out.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2017, 08:58:38 PM by Alan W »
Alan Walker
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Morbius

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2017, 09:15:50 AM »
I'm not sure if logoff is currently allowed.  If not, it would be worth including in any review.  I'd suggest its status should be the same as logon.

Tom

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2017, 10:46:08 AM »
Whilst we are on the subject, what about logout? The bank sites I'm on tell me to logout.

mkenuk

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2017, 08:09:06 PM »
And what about logout, which I'm looking at on the menu at this very moment?

I did actually mention logout in my post.
It's included in the menu of choices near the top of the page!

Tom

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2017, 08:25:18 AM »
Oops!

Alan W

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2017, 10:58:53 PM »
The bank sites I'm on tell me to logout.

Are you sure, Tom? The two banks I do online banking with both invite me to log out, and to log on at the start of a session.

In general, the two-word forms of these expressions appear to be used more frequently than the one-word versions, except in the case of login/log in.

Here are some counts from GloWbE, the 1.9 billion word corpus of Global Web-based English

log in    8446
log out   898
log on   4112
log off    458

And the one-word forms -

login   15948
logout    381
logon   1163
logoff      54

Why are the starting up terms used more often than the finishing ones? One reason is that login, etc are often used for the details you use for signing on: "login name", "login details" or simply, "I've forgotten my login". Also we have the place where you log in, the "login screen", etc. There are no equivalent uses for logout.

I suspect the reasoning behind the suggestions made in this topic is that we must be consistent. If login is common, then logon, which means exactly the same thing, must be common too, even if it is used much less often. And logout, which is the opposite of login, must also be common, even though it is used even more rarely. And following through on the chain of reasoning, logoff should be common also, even though login is used 295 times as often.

But actually, why? I can see there's a strong case for being consistent in allowing all of these as words, which we have done for several years. But whether a word is treated as common must take some account of how commonly it is actually used. On occasions I've been swayed by consistency pleas when I probably shouldn't have. I agreed to a suggestion that all the letters of the Greek alphabet be treated the same. Since some words, like alpha, are obviously common, others like theta and zeta are common too now.

I'm inclined to think logon should be common now, and possibly logout, but I have grave doubts about logoff. It doesn't even look like a word!

I'll leave this issue open for a while in case there are further comments from anyone.
Alan Walker
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TRex

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Re: login/logon
« Reply #7 on: November 11, 2017, 09:45:38 AM »
When writing training materials, I've always struggled with which terms to use. It isn't too hard to be consistent within one document, but am I being consistent in all documents? That is much harder, especially when there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut preference in usage and I don't have a strong personal preference.

The Ngram Viewer isn't much help.

It seems odd that, although login (single word) is most used for siging in/on, log out (two words) is most used for the other — seems one should either use a single word or two words for both actions.