Trantorian Gazette

The difference a word can make.

Thursday Jun 05, 2008

As you may know, several women here at Sun were recently honored by the YWCA of Silicon Valley with the annual YWCA Tribute to Women (TWIN) award. The honorees here at Sun were Cheryl Cook, Beverly Glasser, Noreen Krall and Karen Tegan Padir. Congratulations, ladies!

Now the thing is, the news service System News rightfully had an article about this event. The article was called Women Impacting Sun's Success. Did you catch the problem with this title?

According to Webster's dictionary the definition of the word "impact" is to "affect" or "influence" which I am sure was how the author of the piece meant it. But there is more to the definition than that. The full definition is "To affect or influence, especially in a [...] undesirable manner." You see? When your schedule is impacted by something, it is never a good thing, right? I wonder what a better headline would have been?

[2] Comments
Like this post? del.icio.us | furl | slashdot | technorati | digg