Click on "Welcome First Last" at the top and notice the button that logs you out is titled "Log Out." But notice the button next to "Welcome First Last" is titled "Logout"? Logout is a noun, to be used like so: "go to the logout screen". Log out is an action, to be used like so: "you need to log out". Because both are action buttons, they need to both be titled "Log Out."
Do you not have better things to spend your time on? A noun, is a person, place or thing. A verb denotes action/movement.
Logout is not a person, place or thing, therefore it is not a noun. Logout is an action, therefore it is a verb.
Inconsistencies like these degrade the user experience, more than you would think. A simple grammatical error such as this is easy to fix, but goes a long way to improving the interface and ultimately user experience. Also, you might check out a dictionary definition of "logout" - it is indeed a noun, not a verb. There's a Dictionary app built right into OS X.
These are not user forums. They are developer forums. As for dictionaries, try a real dictionary, Marion Webster, New American Standard, etc. In computer terms, logout is indeed a verb.
English is dead, unfortunately. Most people use "Setup" as a verb these days too (also "signup"). I agree it's not very professional.
I don't know why you would object to good grammar usage. You are incorrect. Signoff, logout, signon, logon are all nouns. The verbs are sign and log.
M-w.com notes all of these action terms as two words.
And it's Merriam-Webster, not Marion. But who cares about spelling, either?
Languages live and change...
Considering "words" such as, Doh, ***, OMG, TGIF, etc. are now officially recognised
and worse, proper words by todays standard, this entire discussion is pointless.
True the words you're complaining about, in their original form, are different parts of
speech and true, they conveyed a different meaning. But that is the nature of language.
It is fluid and ever changing. You must also remember, for better or worse, the vast
majority of people in the tech world originate from non native english speaking cultures
and nations. This too, heavily influences what any word ultimately means. Context also
plays a very large role in the meaning and function of words. As does contraction.
A setup, the setup, his/her setup are all noun uses of the word setup. And all completely
wrong based on the rules of the past. Because, setup is a contraction of set up and until
it was added as a proper word, primarilly due to the prose of popular fiction writers, it was
a verb pair. The same is true of log in, log out, login, logout, sign in, sign out, signin, signout
and many more. In times past, one would log(write(verb)) in(arrival time). And log(write(verb)) out(departure).
Or, sign(write(verb)) in(arrival time) and sign(write(verb)) out(departure). Today, because the action performs
both functions, the terms are contracted to login/logout/signin/signout. We are no longer writing down when
we arrived or departed, we are simply arriving and departing.
I hear the old saw "Languages live and change" a lot. It's often used by people too lazy to learn proper grammar in the first place. I expect Apple's prose to be as professional as possible. At a minimum their usage should be consistent, which in this example, they clearly are not.
Hey, I'm no prescriptivist. But those words ****, and somebody has to carry the English grammar torch.
I get emails from people all the time asking me to "revert back" to them. ***? Sounds like I'll need a teleporter or a human genome scrambler.
BTW - I found the word "roll" used somewhere in the Xcode Docs. The writer meant "role". Maybe that's evolution, too. Why not?
There is no such thing as proper grammar. Grammar is only an observation of naturally forming patterns of usage in language.
Jordan, I agree with you about the verb/noun stuff, but I don't agree that both of these buttons should exist.
True, there really is no need for two buttons just a very short distance away from one another that both do the exact same thing.