Double-you, double-you, double-you.
Nine syllables, count 'em.
Like the period in "dot com" I believe we need to adopt
and simpler way to express those three letters that have
become so (read that "too") ubiquitous in our culture.

I'd like to nominate "dub-dub-dub".
Any takers?


Bill Hedge
wohedge@timesten.com

threedub?

and the http://? most url's work fine with out the http://www.-- and like area codes-- just get dropped-- if you call international frequently, you know the 011 internation access code (US) and the country code and the city code-- and just can get "the number". The web is easier-- why work at fixing something that aint broke?

amazon.com in the location box of my browser is just as effective as hppt://www.amazon.com

perhaps instead of World Wide Web we could get it rechristened as Ultra Unipotent Utility; you know,
you, you, you...

I've heard "triple W" used by radio announcers.

Rapunzel,

Yes. You seemed to have figured out that I was writing about the spoken word and the effect that www has on
an announcer's rhythm.
Thanks.


Bill Hedge
wohedge@timesten.com

If announcers didn't have to say W-W-W once in awhile how would we know they were sober?
One wonders.

I think the whole problem stems from the silly way in which we say 'w' in English. Other languages have a single syllable for this letter.
I'm not entirely against '3dub'. Perhaps we could adopt a phonetic pronunciation?

he only objection I might have to "dub" is its old usage as an abbrev. for the two zeroes in the 24 hour clock; "Early shift starts at Oh Six Dub" (i.e., 0600 hrs) However, I don't hear this so very often, these days so I think it is a moribund usage.

"3 dub" has quite a snappy sound to it, but "dub-dub-dub" is too reminiscent of the open ceremony at the Wolf Cub pack to which I belonged, ah! so many years ago!

I agree with of Troy, let's just drop it. If you don't yet realize that WWW addresses start with www. then you aren't online! Here in Vermont, where we only have one area code, you omit it when you are giving someone your phone number, and even in places where there are many area codes, you don't say, "my number is 1-617-555-1234." You leave off the 1, because you know that the other person knows that you need to dial it. That's why I've formed the NO-WWW, the National Opposition to Worthless and Wasted Words. For more acronym fun, check out the Acronym Expansion Game thread in Wordplay and Fun.

BTW, of Troy, I imagine that amazon.com would be more effective than hppt://www.amazon.com, but http://www.amazon.com might do the trick.

I tend to say "wuh-wuh-wuh" and people who don't know me have no clue what I am saying. My husband, however, has finally caught on, and knows I am reading "www" sort of phonetically.

> I am reading "www" sort of phonetically

That's what I suggested Bean, it's more fun than useful though.
Flatlander, it's true that most of the time one can leave the www out and you'll still be understood, but some addy's do in fact have a different DNS root and therefore start with something else besides www (e.g. www2.sitename.com; ftp.site.com; mp3.grin.net etc.)
I agree that for common sites it should/could be omitted when spoken, not to mention the http://, although there are exceptions for this too (e.g. https://, i.e. secure http).

We could, of course do without with the silly protocol and use IP addresses which they resolve to....
'Has anyone visited that great new site: 207.46.131.91 lately'.
No, that's not going to work, huh.

We could, of course do without with the silly protocol and use IP addresses which they resolve to.... 'Has anyone visited that great new site: 207.46.131.91 lately'.

I'm sure it wouldn't catch on, but if you think about it, it's the same amount of digits as a (US) phone number with area code, and look at how many of those we can memorize. And, BY, 207.46.131.91 ain't new or great. Very funny. What's AWADtalk's IP address?

>What's AWADtalk's IP address?
That's 216.55.5.87. Some DNS entries will often have many IP addresses hidden behind them; behind an (virtual) IP perhaps many servers. So you can never really be sure where you end up!