Pet Peeve: Log In/Log On

Repeat after me, people on television talking about websites. (I think this whole thing may be the fault of the Today Show, because I heard this horrifying thing there a long time before it became as pervasive as it is now.)

If you enter a URL in your location bar and your browser loads up the website, which you can then use to view the information the talking head on the television was sending you to without entering a username and password, then you do NOT "log in" or "log on" to that site. A URL is not a login. (sigh) If you need a verb, which I suppose you do, I suggest "navigate to". Although that's scary to the people who fear multi-syllable words. Maybe "point your browser to..." if you must.

If you don't know what either of those means, you should either get someone hip to 'splain it to you or just sell the computer and go back to reading books, which is probably what most of us should be doing anyway.

And, if by some chance, television people, the website you are directing people to does require a login and password in order to view the content that you are sending them to, by all means tell them to "log in" or "log on". Because that's what they're doing.

Navigating your browser to a site via a URL does not equal log on.

It's not just non-tech people who do this, either. Back when TechTV still was around, the people on their shows used to say this all the time. Nails on a blackboard, I tell you. Chinese water torture. If Jack Bauer thought I had information about the "nukuler bombs", he could skip cutting off my finger and just proceed to screaming, "Log on! Log on!" in my ear and I'd spill.

Now you may go about your business. Thank you for reading. Not that this will do any good, other than making me feel 0.000001% better about the whole thing.