InformAction Forums

What is ": mcdonalds.com" supposed to do when you type it into the URL bar?

Also again note the misspelling, mcdonalds.com vs. mcdonlads.com.

GµårÐïåñ wrote:my issue is why is this request being made at all?

Which request? I'm willing to bet the thing you've seen was just a Request Policy artifact/bug, and no request to informaction.com was being made from "mcdonalds.com" (which was not a site you reached at all).
On a side note, I guess therube's question was more interested in the ":" before mcdonalds.com, rather than in the spelling per se.

First, let's settle the all-important grammatical and syntax issue:

GµårÐïåñ wrote:...typed : mcdonalds.com

People constantly deride us grammarians as being out-of-date prescriptivists in a world of IM and SMS, but in fact, "punctuation matters". The colon to show sequentiality should follow immediately after the preceding word, without a space, as in the first line of this post. That makes your intent clear: that the colon says, "Hey, look at what I'm about to say!". The space between "typed" and ":", probably a typo (I make a million a day), led to the ambiguity of whether the colon belonged to "typed" or to "mcdonalds" (let's ignore the spelling issue).

I typed: mcdonalds.com
I typed :mcdonalds.com

Clearly, the second has a much different meaning from the first. What actually happened was in between:

I typed : mcdonalds.com

.... leaving doubt as to whether the colon was the sequential mark to "typed", or was part of the address that you typed.

I'm in a business where tiny changes in punctuation, grammar, or syntax can lead to different interpretations of a contract when it gets to court, causing swings of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So yes, this stuff matters. No dollars involved here, just confusion of meaning. So it matters here and everywhere else. Not criticizing anyone, just explaining/defending why rules of syntax in English are as important as in coding: One mistake changes or hoses the whole thing. If the meaning is clear, then there is no reason to mention the error. But G and therube got into it because of a punctuation issue. </lecture>

@Giorgio: I've been meaning to ask this for some time, and this seems like a good moment: When ABE is fully operational, won't RequestPolicy become redundant and obsolete for NS users? No offense to Justin, though I wish he'd honored the request to make RP F2-friendly.

One aspect of common sense intelligence my friend is the ability to derive meaning as well. I am not writing a contract or an epic piece of literature here and nor should anyone ever expect that, I can certainly be a dick and point out countless issues with others' posts but I focus on the content not how they asked for it, so if in the haste of typing I put an extra space in there, the meaning is easily derived by simply looking at the WHOLE post rather than nit picking a single character, especially that web addresses don't have spaces. Plus, I didn't get into anything with anyone, I was accused of mistyping and I simply clarified that I hadn't. Afterall this is a technical forum not the knights of old English or literature, right? I have withdrawn my posts and will deal with my problem myself as to not offend anyone else's sensibilities here.

Bro, I said it was probably just a typo, and was explaining how therube could reasonably have misunderstood it. Yeah, I know it came off as too much of a lecture (note the html tag at the end), but again, just trying to make peace between therube and you over his reasonable misunderstanding of your reasonable typo.
I can delete the lecture if you like, or you can delete it. But when we are describing code, things we type in address bars, etc., it does seem that a little more care is warranted then in general chit-chat, no? ... since one character can make a difference. *Not* criticizing you -- I'm the world's worst typist. Once in a while, it matters. Just go ahead and delete what I said; it didn't seem to help anything, and I'm gonna call it an online night and relax. Take care.

btw, "all-important grammatical and syntax issue", followed by the huge grin, was intended to show that the writer was facetiously over-inflating the importance of the issue. Perennial problem of the Net vs. real-time talk -- so hard to get the subtleties of emotion and meaning in there. Cheers!

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