A Requiem for the Bookmark: Refresh That, Favor This
From time to time, when teaching students about the Internet, I catch myself telling students to “hit reload” or suggesting that they “bookmark that.”
These are Netscape-era terms, and while Internet Explorer is dominant now, I can’t seem to unlearn those terms.
It’s a simple matter to correct myself and say, “Sorry, I meant, ‘hit refresh,'” but saying ‘Add it to My Favorites” is clunky, and telling them to “favor it” is meaningless.
Microsoft uses “bookmark” to refer to something completely different.
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My students who never used Netscape respond with blank stares when I say “bookmark.” I do think it’s a better term than. Favoritize?
For some reason, “bookmark” has stuck as the term for saving the url of a page, perhaps partially because saying it’s a “favorite” is to vague, and “Add it to your favorites” is to clunky and to vague (favorites? what does that have to do with a web page?) Perhaps you should just always use “bookmark” – everyone seems to know what that means. :-)