QA Hates You

Ever wonder what Web designers did before the Web existed?

This article gives us some insight.

I’m cruising a low-end user site, and a flashing, garish ad greets me:

Click for full size

Of course, they want the flashing border to capture your attention.  You know what got mine immediately: misspelling the word receive.

I before E except after C except in a scam, I guess.

If you want to forward a Holland America e-mail, it takes you to the Web interface where the developers have split the difference on the proper use of the possessive:

Click for full size

One could try to argue, as the developer probably would, that Friends name is plural because there are multiple edit boxes.  However, that would apply to the e-mail address boxes, too, and Friends name as a plural should be Friends names.

Developers are so amusing when they try to manufacture grammatical rules to rationalize their mistakes.

I heard of a mythical time where professional media had proofreaders.  Maybe that was in the Age of Heroes, which is to say a non-existent time before now.  Here are some examples of television news captions that went from someone’s fumbling fingers directly to the air.

(Link via O’Brien Media.)

So I was at this Web blog reading a post about how Microsoft might want little ol’ me to be on its team, and I got a link to this “job posting.”

Except it wasn’t:

 
Click for full size

What do you know?  Another error has occured.   Is this ubiquitous misspelling a part of a Microsoft library somewhere?  If so, could my loyal Microsoft readers please change it to the non-passive voice We were eating our own dog food, as you can see since we have just splugged it all over your carpet?

Put down in your best practices document, gentle reader, that a part of the build process should include an automatic global search and replace for occured and spell it correctly as occurred.

I guess that job posting is fixed now, but I’m probably not Microsoft material.

Is it always i before e except after c?  This error message from GoDaddy tries a conservative approach:

Click for full size

Well, that particular developer left nothing to chance and put an e on either side of the i.

And nobody else looked at the error message.

I need to find the publishing house behind the standard developer dictionary and burn it down.

Click for full size

The development team behind this Craftsman NASCAR sweepstakes misspell occurred.  I don’t know why developers commonly misspell this word.  Are they copying and pasting it from the same Platonic nearly-ideal error message?  Is it misspelled in a default message in every IDE known to man?  Is it some hopeful invocation that the occult will cure the problem?  Who can read the minds of developers?  Whenever I try, I get gibberish interspersed with attention to shiny things.

When you’re testing out your application’s validation, watch for the single-R occured.  You will see them everywhere.

The White House has a budget of $5 million annually for its communications team.

However, apparently none of that has been wasted on proofreaders, since press releases and diplomatic agreements include numerous misspellings, including the President’s very name.

I was going to make some comment about having to pay extra attention to uncommon words such as brand names and people’s names, which often plagues interactive agency communications that misspell their clients’ names or even their own agency names.  However, this problem with the communications team seems to go far beyond that and into lack of attention to detail.

For $172,200 a year, I could head up the effort.  White House, click the Sez Who? link for contact info!

The SD Times Internet site promises me streaming media that it doesn’t provide:

Click for full size

I keep clicking Nevermind, but I don’t hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Job posting:

 
Click for full size

Maybe it’s an add for a detrigonometry position.

What kind of company wants desiners?

The kind of company that has a desgin process and works on brand indetity:

Click for full size

And that lacks a standard for presenting Web site as one word or two:

Click for full size

That is to say, ultimately, a company like all the rest.

Joe Strazzere has it.

Remember, not all typos have monetary value you can trace to it, but each one in your application or Web site is a drip that accumulates in the mind of your users, and eventually one small typo will make that user stop trusting your software even if it works otherwise.

In the meantime, note that the dollar figure mentioned above is Canadian dollars. Someone clue me in to current exchange rates so I know which way to direct my punchline to the required joke.

From the Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword Civilopedia early in 2008:

Click for full size

I’ve never really read the Civilopedia before, but since it apparently picked the next (now current) president, I’m going to really delve into it looking for lottery ticket numbers and whatnot.

I’m pleased to report, though, that gameplay continues after 2012, even if you’re playing a Mayan civilization.

Nothing, actually, but this banner ad might lead me to the mistaken conclusion:

Other sizes of this particular ad have the word park spelled correctly; however, the “designers” in this particular instance didn’t see that their text box was truncating a letter. Obviously, it would have not been cost effective for this particular company to have someone look at the freaking things before launching them in the wild, the margins being so low for these sorts of things.

If you’re writing an article about language, how about spelling all the words in the headline correctly?

Click for full size

Someone will have to tell me what the article’s about.  I couldn’t make it past the headline.  Also, I’m not reading Australian news for fun; I’m reading it because PhilK pointed out the problem.

The title tag and text are correct:

 
Click for full size

The filename, though, indicates someone mistyped when creating the blog post’s draft: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A-Bit-More-Invovled.aspx

Hey, I’ve done it too, as anyone who’s paid attention to the archives can attest.  However, you should not be shy, ungentle reader, against logging defects against misspellings in the directories and filenames in your Web applications.  Remember, they too are visible and should be impeccable to put your organization/application in the best light.

An employer putting the real job duties in the title:

Click for full size

I assume that an analsyt is supposed to just sit on his or her butt all day and let dev and project management have their ways with the project.  I’ve known a number of QA professionals who’ve thought that their jobs were, essentially, to call meetings and discuss/prioritize issues found by the customers instead of, I don’t know, understanding the software and technology and enforcing quality or testing.

Sadly, also in my experience, that unbelievable lightness of being tends to rise to management quickly.

Well, all right, it wouldn’t have been perfect even if it hadn’t had this mistake, but here’s a Disney e-mail with a subtle flaw in its alt text for the text images:

Click for full size

Look closely at any e-mail, and you’ll find at least one typo most of the time.  If you’re in QA, you should look more closely than that.

It’s every thing, every time. As this high school principal and his minions discovered:

Westlake High School officials misspelled “education” on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It’s been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent back the diplomas once to correct another error. When the diplomas came back, no one bothered to check things they thought were right the first time.

In information technology, that happens most frequently with version control problems (in design) or new code that doesn’t play well with the other code. You need to test it (or proofread) it all from scratch every iteration; if you only check resolved issues, you’re going to be embarrassed.

(Link seen on Electric Venom.)

Philosophical musings present in alt text in the Ballard 25th Anniversary Sweepstakes.

Click for full size

Am I an istant winner? If so, what does it mean to my existence and consciousness that I crave istant things? Are istant things the opposite of extant things?

Of course, it could be a typo, but why remove the mysteries from the everyday world?

If your standards are not that high, here’s a job for you:

Click for full size

Senioer, indeed.