Thursday 7 July 2011

An Inappropriate Acronym

I've just been updating one or two aspects of my website (www.w3kts.com, for those of you who didn't get here by means of it) and, in these days of joined up thinking - or, rather, the aspiration to be considered a joined-up thinker - I thought it wise to include details of the other ways by which I and my work can be accessed.

So, on the 'contact' page, in addition to my company address, land-line and mobile telephone number I now include an 0845 number.  This has been allocated to me, at no cost, by my telephone service in the hope that callers from beyond my local exchange area will use it, to the financial benefit of my service provider. All well and good - an enterprising initiative.

And there are other contact details for me to include.  This blog that you are reading now is relevant, so I've created a hyperlink to it which can be accessed by clicking on the 'Blogspot' logo.  My professional details and CV appear on my 'Linked In' listing, so there's another hyperlink to that, accessed by clicking on its logo.  And, for those with a relatively short attention span - i.e. around 140 words or whatever it is this week - there's my Twitter account, available by clicking on the twitter icon.

Naturally, as I claim to have a designer's orderly mind, I have arrayed these logos in alphabetical order. And that's where the problem arises.

My website now proclaims "BINT".





'Bint' isn't a particularly attractive word.  It is a corruption of the arab word meaning 'daughter' and its current definition ranges from "a naïve female, often considered stupid" to stronger terms for the derogatory "tart". Hopefully, people who know me will a) know me to be the wrong gender and b) wouldn't in any case have thought of me that way, even before I brought it to their attention. Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive.

Besides, I've now added a You Tube icon to the row to lessen the impact.

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