It's Nine-Eleven, Not Nine-One-One

I'm sure it's the combination of my being a language purist and a numbers-oriented person; but I'm sick of air-heads on the news trying to be oh so clever by referring to the date of the terrorist attacks as Nine-One-One. Who the heck refers to dates in that manner? I can't recall ever saying that my birthday is Eight-One-Eight.

Of course, I find that I'm also one of a very few who refuse to refer to Zeroes as Ohs. This is a definite holdover from my classes in computer programming where that distinction was crucial. The number Zero and the letter O are not at all interchangeable.

As a little more related trivia that most people have forgotten, the reason the universal emergency phone number was changed from Nine-Eleven to Nine-One-One is because there were actual documented cases of people in emergencies who were unable to call for help because they couldn't find the Eleven button on their telephones. True story.

Our educational systems are continuing to churn out more functional illiterates all the time. About a year ago, when Rush Limbaugh set up his new website and was describing it during his radio show, he tried to use what I thought was a very clever shorthand for the first part of the URL. Instead of the very lengthy "W-W-W" he used "Triple-Dub." Rush had to stop using this after a few weeks because too many people were unable to reach his site by typing in "Triple-Dub" in their web browsers. Who says you have to be a member of Mensa to use a computer?

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 12/23/2001 03:44:00 PM Send this post: