Comments on: When can I say “janky” in my on-screen text?

By: asansör

asansör — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:31:11 +0000

Thank you for sharing…

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:57:57 +0000

@Juliet, Oh yeah, the comma splice. Forgot about that one, but they’re so common, it’s hardly worth calling attention to.

By: Juliet

Juliet — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:17:53 +0000

Isn’t anyone going to complain that they also included a comma splice? This is just another reason to ignore them and their janky, pretentiously hip vocabulary. (By the way, I’m American, and I’ve never heard “janky” until now.)

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:50:13 +0000

I added a “d” in kludgey just now — thanks. Tony, I like the term glitchlessly too. I think I’ll try to work that into my documentation in some subtle way.

I’ve never heard the word “janky” before either. It must be a trendy California word right now.

The whole ploy seems like a rhetorical move to me — admitting that something is poorly designed, but winning over the user by breaking the stuffy rules of software language with a cool urban term.

By: Tony Chung

Tony Chung — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:43:31 +0000

Firefox’s built-in dictionary acts up when I spell klugey without a d in it. Sad to say that even imaginary words have a correct spelling: kludgey. I recently edited a document that described how to address a piece of equipment so that it performed “glitchlessly”. Glitch, glitchy, glitchless are all engineering terms, I’m sure! Ha ha!

Tony Chungs last blog post..Self exposed when the lights go out

By: Rachel Peters

Rachel Peters — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:26:54 +0000

I have no idea what “janky” or “klugey” mean, but I get it from the context clues – “it’ll be better in future releases.” OK, so those words are synonymous with “wonky” (one of my favorites). I say throw in the vernacular, but support it with context. Makes for good fun, which we all need when we’re reading help documentation.

By: Bill Janke

Bill Janke — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:40:16 +0000

Hmmm. It’s sounds like my last name, which is German, so maybe the term got its start in Germany. Some people spell it Jahnke, and either pronounce it as a “Y” or a hard “J,” like I do. Excuse me, but I have to go now as I am feeling a little “Janky” because I haven’t had my morning coffee.

By: Kirsty

Kirsty — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:23:14 +0000

Probably the hardest part of using spoken vernacular like this is … does your audience know what the word means?
Could be that I don’t know janky because I’m not American (is it a cultural/regional term?), and sure I can make a guess at its meaning, but if I happened to come across this in technical doco, I’d be a bit stumped. Klugey would also make me pause for a few moments. I’ve been working with Americans for 9 or so years now, and my husband lived in California for 4 years, so I’ve *heard* klugey, but for some reason, that’s not how I would think you would spell it. Not sure how it should be spelt, but it seems … odd …
Kirsty

Kirstys last blog post..STC Technical Communication Summit: Opening Panel

By: What About Mom

What About Mom — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:12:25 +0000

Honey! You’ve been reading urbandictionary.com again! Love it — “The fact that our microwave is now completely janky is due to my wife’s regrettably klugey temperament.”