Back to the topic of "list" and "listserv" for a minute:  I saw an almost
unbelievable example of the confusion today.  A colleague called me into
his office to help him figure out how to follow some instructions he had
recently received for subscribing to a list for Yale alums.  I assured him
as we were walking toward his office that I would have no trouble telling
him what to do once I saw whether the list was running on listserv,
listproc, or majordomo.  When he showed me the e-mail, I was fascinated
by the extremely murky and inconsistent instructions and am still not
sure what kind of software it's running on.  But that's not my point here.
The point is that the instructions were full of things like explanations
of what "a list(serv)" is.  Early in the message the person said something
about another word for "listserv" being "list."  Then he wafted back and
forth a little bit between using "listserv" and "list."  But the prize-
winning word-choice IMHO was when he moved to writing it "list(serv)" --
probably feeling proud of his clever way to solve the problem of which
to call it.
   --Natalie ([log in to unmask])