I used to get really steamed when I read Business Week magazine stories about companies who do business primarily through their Web sites. They constantly referred to companies of that type as "dot.com" companies. I thought that was wrong, because I thought we had established the standard that you "read" the dot separators ("Amazon dot com," "priceline dot com," et al.). To me, that phrase should have been read "dot dot com."

First of all, does anyone have other examples of how domain naming protocol has been incorporated into the language?

And secondly, is there a word for the phenomenon of writing words that *look* like the phenomenon they are trying to represent? Kinda like onomatopoeia for the eyes....

Thanks!

Along this same line - - does anybody remember the stand-up routine that Victor Borge used to do where he had sound effects and hand motions for punctuation marks ?

I do remember and very fondly so!!!

I was reading the Times today and spotted an article on e-commerce. It looks like they read your post and have settled on the dot-com companies, rather than, as you say dot.com(which should be pronounced "dot dot com")