Reproduced with permission from <http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2001-04.html>. © 2001 Richard Forno. Permission granted to freely reproduce - in whole or in part for noncommercial use - with appropriate credit to author and INFOWARRIOR.ORG.


For his novel 1984 George Orwell developed Newspeak, a modified English language using ambiguous or deceptive words, metaphors, or euphemisms to influence public opinion on various matters - a common business practice refined to an exacting science by news media, marketing companies, and corporate PR departments.

Nowhere is Newspeak more perfected than in the halls of the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington - a place where legions of well-paid spin-meisters attempt to morph the reality of their company's business, legal, and product information into innocuous-sounding, politically-correct, calm-inducing statements when released to the public. Naturally, this has a confusing effect on the general public who is unfamiliar with this particular form of language.

As a public service, this article contains a helpful list of terms used by the company and what, in reality - not Newspeak - such terms actually mean. It's my hope that such insight - culled from personal experience and the input of technology professionals - will cut through the Newspeak fog and assist readers in determining for themselves what Microsoft is really saying in its public statements.

The Microsoft-English Dictionary is organized into four sections:

  1. Legal, Marketing, and Internet Community Terms
  2. Security-Oriented Terms
  3. Product-Related Terms
  4. Miscellaneous Terms


Yes, I'm still noding the rest of this. I have to start somewhere. :)

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