NYCPHP Meetup

[Allen Shaw]

I recently fought this one with myself (not sure who won...) and then
decided to look at some popular non-technical sites, since mine is a site
aimed at folks with little to no technical background, more a community
site.  MSN/Hotmail, yahoo.com, and netscape.com all use the phrase "Sign In"
to describe the act of providing account credentials.  I've done away with
the word "log" and all its variants altogether, so that the site now has
"Username" and "Password" fields, and any helpful text refers to "signing
in."  This seems to me to match culturally with non-computer activities; the
only time I can think of that people do anything similar in the "real world"
is when they sign themselves in and out of a guest book or security log-book
at an office building, etc.  So, I figure the phrase is less techie and more
familiar to more people.

Either way, it seems right that "Sign in" and "Log in" are verbs, and
"Sign-in" and "Log-in" are nouns and/or adjectives.

- Allen


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Mintz" <dmintz at davidmintz.org>
To: "NYPHP Talk" <talk at lists.nyphp.org>
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] log-in


>
>
> Agreed:  form elements username and password should have labels "Username"
> and "Password." But it's awkward if not impossible to avoid the L-word
> forever.  For example this site has navigation thingies that say something
> like "Members Only (Login Required)", or help file with a section headed
> "Login Assistance."  True, you could substitute "Username/Password" in
> each of the above cases but you see my point.  Especially where page
> layout is a consideration and terse label texts are desirable.
>
>
> ---
> David Mintz
> http://davidmintz.org/
>