Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with `>' — but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zero-content filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold.
Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail.
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the `correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to {holy wars}.
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this,
> relevant excerpt 1 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 2 response to excerpt > relevant excerpt 3 response to excerpt
or for short messages like this:
> entire message response to message
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will occasionally see the entire quoted message *after* the response, like this
response to message > entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Though `>' remains the standard inclusion leader, `|' is occasionally used for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses `|>'). One also sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader of `> ' for everyone, another (the most common) is `> > > > ', `> > > ', etc. (or `>>>> ', `>>>', etc., depending on line length and nesting depth) reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a different citation leader for each author, say `> ', `: ', `| ', `} ' (preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet *another* style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation leader for that poster.
Occasionally one sees a `# ' leader used for quotations from authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued when one is running as the privileged super-user).
:Hacker Speech Style: =====================
Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly flippant attitude are highly valued — but an underlying seriousness and intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark of a loser.
This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant throughout hackerdom.
It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative questions — or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have done so much programming that distinguishes between
if (going) …
and
if (!going) …
that when they parse the question "Aren't you going?" it seems to be asking the opposite question from "Are you going?", and so merits an answer in the opposite sense. This confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as though the negative part weren't there. In some other languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like French `si' or German `doch' with which one could unambiguously answer `yes' to a negative question.
For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them. The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.
In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering questions containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather than colloquial interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like "So, are you working on finding that bug *now* or leaving it until later?" is likely to get the perfectly correct answer "Yes!" (that is, "Yes, I'm doing it either now or later, and you didn't ask which!").
:International Style: =====================
Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage in American English, we have made some effort to get input from abroad. Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting, and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.
There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'. These are intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, India, etc. — though Canada is heavily influenced by American usage). There is also an entry on {{Commonwealth Hackish}} reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from U.S. hackish.
Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that they often use a mixture of English and their native languages for technical conversation. Occasionally they develop idioms in their English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles. Some of these are reported here.
On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and vocabulary mutations in the native language. For example, Italian hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and `deletare' (to delete) rather than native Italian `scorrere' and `cancellare'. Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seen conjugated in Swedish. European hackers report that this happens partly because the English terms make finer distinctions than are available in their native vocabularies, and partly because deliberate language-crossing makes for amusing wordplay.
A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to English-speakers.
:Crackers, Phreaks, and Lamers: ===============================
From the late 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local, MS-DOS-based bulletin boards has been developing separately from Internet hackerdom. The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a stratum of `pirate boards' inhabited by {cracker}s, phone phreaks, and {warez d00dz}. These people (mostly teenagers running PC-clones from their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon, heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.
Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet expertise, nor experience with UNIX or other true multi-user systems). Their vocabulary has little overlap with hackerdom's. Nevertheless, this lexicon covers much of it so the reader will be able to understand what goes by on bulletin-board systems.
Here is a brief guide to cracker and {warez d00dz} usage:
* Misspell frequently. The substitutions
phone => fone freak => phreak
are obligatory.* Always substitute `z's for `s's. (i.e. "codes" -> "codez").* Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "HeyDudes!#!$#$!#!$").* Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")frequently.* Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").* Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer").* TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THETIME.
These traits are similar to those of {B1FF}, who originated as a parody of naive BBS users. For further discussion of the pirate-board subculture, see {lamer}, {elite}, {leech}, {poser}, {cracker}, and especially {warez d00dz}.
:How to Use the Lexicon: ************************
:Pronunciation Guide: =====================
Pronunciation keys are provided in the jargon listings for all entries that are neither dictionary words pronounced as in standard English nor obvious compounds thereof. Slashes bracket phonetic pronunciations, which are to be interpreted using the following conventions:
1. Syllables are hyphen-separated, except that an accent or back-accent follows each accented syllable (the back-accent marks a secondary accent in some words of four or more syllables). If no accent is given, the word is pronounced with equal accentuation on all syllables (this is common for abbreviations).
2. Consonants are pronounced as in American English. The letter `g' is always hard (as in "got" rather than "giant"); `ch' is soft ("church" rather than "chemist"). The letter `j' is the sound that occurs twice in "judge". The letter `s' is always as in "pass", never a z sound. The digraph `kh' is the guttural of "loch" or "l'chaim". The digraph 'gh' is the aspirated g+h of "bughouse" or "ragheap" (rare in English).
3. Uppercase letters are pronounced as their English letter names; thus (for example) /H-L-L/ is equivalent to /aych el el/. /Z/ may be pronounced /zee/ or /zed/ depending on your local dialect.
4. Vowels are represented as follows:
/a/back, that/ah/father, palm (see note)/ar/far, mark/aw/flaw, caught/ay/bake, rain/e/less, men/ee/easy, ski/eir/their, software/i/trip, hit/i:/life, sky/o/block, stock (see note)/oh/flow, sew/oo/loot, through/or/more, door/ow/out, how/oy/boy, coin/uh/but, some/u/put, foot/y/yet, young/yoo/few, chew/[y]oo//oo/ with optional fronting as in `news' (/nooz/ or/nyooz/)
The glyph /*/ is used for the `schwa' sound of unstressed or occluded vowels (the one that is often written with an upside-down `e'). The schwa vowel is omitted in syllables containing vocalic r, l, m or n; that is, `kitten' and `color' would be rendered /kit'n/ and /kuhl'r/, not /kit'*n/ and /kuhl'*r/.
Note that the above table reflects mainly distinctions found in standard American English (that is, the neutral dialect spoken by TV network announcers and typical of educated speech in the Upper Midwest, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Philadelphia). However, we separate /o/ from /ah/, which tend to merge in standard American. This may help readers accustomed to accents resembling British Received Pronunciation.
The intent of this scheme is to permit as many readers as possible to map the pronunciations into their local dialect by ignoring some subset of the distinctions we make. Speakers of British RP, for example, can smash terminal /r/ and all unstressed vowels. Speakers of many varieties of southern American will automatically map /o/ to /aw/; and so forth. (Standard American makes a good reference dialect for this purpose because it has crisp consonents and more vowel distinctions than other major dialects, and tends to retain distinctions between unstressed vowels. It also happens to be what your editor speaks.)
Entries with a pronunciation of `//' are written-only usages. (No, Unix weenies, this does *not* mean `pronounce like previous pronunciation'!)
:Other Lexicon Conventions: ===========================
Entries are sorted in case-blind ASCII collation order (rather than the letter-by-letter order ignoring interword spacing common in mainstream dictionaries), except that all entries beginning with nonalphabetic characters are sorted after Z. The case-blindness is a feature, not a bug.
The beginning of each entry is marked by a colon (`:') at the left margin. This convention helps out tools like hypertext browsers that benefit from knowing where entry boundaries are, but aren't as context-sensitive as humans.
In pure ASCII renderings of the Jargon File, you will see {} used to bracket words which themselves have entries in the File. This isn't done all the time for every such word, but it is done everywhere that a reminder seems useful that the term has a jargon meaning and one might wish to refer to its entry.
In this all-ASCII version, headwords for topic entries are distinguished from those for ordinary entries by being followed by "::" rather than ":"; similarly, references are surrounded by "{{" and "}}" rather than "{" and "}".
Defining instances of terms and phrases appear in `slanted type'. A defining instance is one which occurs near to or as part of an explanation of it.
Prefixed ** is used as linguists do; to mark examples of incorrect usage.
We follow the `logical' quoting convention described in the Writing Style section above. In addition, we reserve double quotes for actual excerpts of text or (sometimes invented) speech. Scare quotes (which mark a word being used in a nonstandard way), and philosopher's quotes (which turn an utterance into the string of letters or words that name it) are both rendered with single quotes.
References such as `malloc(3)' and `patch(1)' are to Unix facilities (some of which, such as `patch(1)', are actually freeware distributed over Usenet). The Unix manuals use `foo(n)' to refer to item foo in section (n) of the manual, where n=1 is utilities, n=2 is system calls, n=3 is C library routines, n=6 is games, and n=8 (where present) is system administration utilities. Sections 4, 5, and 7 of the manuals have changed roles frequently and in any case are not referred to in any of the entries.
Various abbreviations used frequently in the lexicon are summarized here:
abbrev.abbreviationadj.adjectiveadv.adverbalt.alternatecav.caveatconj.conjunctionesp.especiallyexcl.exclamationimp.imperativeinterj.interjectionn.nounobs.obsoletepl.pluralposs.possiblypref.prefixprob.probablyprov.proverbialquant.quantifiersuff.suffixsyn.synonym (or synonymous with)v.verb (may be transitive or intransitive)var.variantvi.intransitive verbvt.transitive verb
Where alternate spellings or pronunciations are given, alt. separates two possibilities with nearly equal distribution, while var. prefixes one that is markedly less common than the primary.
Where a term can be attributed to a particular subculture or is known to have originated there, we have tried to so indicate. Here is a list of abbreviations used in etymologies:
Amateur Packet RadioA technical culture of ham-radio sites using AX.25 and TCP/IP forwide-area networking and BBS systems.BerkeleyUniversity of California at BerkeleyBBNBolt, Beranek & NewmanCambridgethe university in England (*not* the city in Massachusetts whereMIT happens to be located!)CMUCarnegie-Mellon UniversityCommodoreCommodore Business MachinesDECThe Digital Equipment CorporationFairchildThe Fairchild Instruments Palo Alto development groupFidoNetSee the {FidoNet} entryIBMInternational Business MachinesMITMassachusetts Institute of Technology; esp. the legendary MIT AILab culture of roughly 1971 to 1983 and its feeder groups,including the Tech Model Railroad ClubNRLNaval Research LaboratoriesNYUNew York UniversityOEDThe Oxford English DictionaryPurduePurdue UniversitySAILStanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (at StanfordUniversity)SIFrom Syst`eme International, the name for the standardconventions of metric nomenclature used in the sciencesStanfordStanford UniversitySunSun MicrosystemsTMRCSome MITisms go back as far as the Tech Model Railroad Club(TMRC) at MIT c. 1960. Material marked TMRC is from "An AbridgedDictionary of the TMRC Language", originally compiled by PeteSamson in 1959UCLAUniversity of California at Los AngelesUKthe United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland)UsenetSee the {Usenet} entryWPIWorcester Polytechnic Institute, site of a very active communityof PDP-10 hackers during the 1970sWWWThe World-Wide-Web.XEROX PARCXEROX's Palo Alto Research Center, site of much pioneeringresearch in user interface design and networkingYaleYale University
Some other etymology abbreviations such as {Unix} and {PDP-10} refer to technical cultures surrounding specific operating systems, processors, or other environments. The fact that a term is labelled with any one of these abbreviations does not necessarily mean its use is confined to that culture. In particular, many terms labelled `MIT' and `Stanford' are in quite general use. We have tried to give some indication of the distribution of speakers in the usage notes; however, a number of factors mentioned in the introduction conspire to make these indications less definite than might be desirable.
A few new definitions attached to entries are marked [proposed]. These are usually generalizations suggested by editors or Usenet respondents in the process of commenting on previous definitions of those entries. These are *not* represented as established jargon.
:Format For New Entries: ========================
You can mail submissions for the Jargon File tojargon@@snark.thyrsus.com.
All contributions and suggestions about the Jargon File will be considered donations to be placed in the public domain as part of this File, and may be used in subsequent paper editions. Submissions may be edited for accuracy, clarity and concision.
Try to conform to the format already being used in the ASCII on-line version —- head-words separated from text by a colon (double colon for topic entries), cross-references in curly brackets (doubled for topic entries), pronunciations in slashes, etymologies in square brackets, single-space after definition numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set (7-bit printable, no high-half characters or [nt]roff/TeX/Scribe escapes), as one of the versions generated from the master file is an info document that has to be viewable on a character tty.
We are looking to expand the File's range of technical specialties covered. There are doubtless rich veins of jargon yet untapped in the scientific computing, graphics, and networking hacker communities; also in numerical analysis, computer architectures and VLSI design, language design, and many other related fields. Send us your jargon!
We are *not* interested in straight technical terms explained by textbooks or technical dictionaries unless an entry illuminates `underground' meanings or aspects not covered by official histories. We are also not interested in `joke' entries — there is a lot of humor in the file but it must flow naturally out of the explanations of what hackers do and how they think.
It is OK to submit items of jargon you have originated if they have spread to the point of being used by people who are not personally acquainted with you. We prefer items to be attested by independent submission from two different sites.
An HTML version of the File is available at http://www.ccil.org/jargon. Please send us URLs for materials related to the entries, so we can enrich the File's link structure.
The Jargon File will be regularly maintained and made available for browsing on the World Wide Web, and will include a version number. Read it, pass it around, contribute — this is *your* monument!
End of the Preface to the Jargon File