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])