The Old New Thing

Microspeak - The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Landing, especially the heated kind

July 16, 2013 Jul 16, 2013 07/16/13
Raymond Chen
Work on Windows occurs in several different branches of the source code, and changes in one branch propagate to other branches. When talking about a feature or other task becoming visible in a branch, the preferred jargon word at Microsoft is landing. In its purest form: We expect the feature to land in the trunk early next week. The term...

Microspeak: to family well

June 18, 2013 Jun 18, 2013 06/18/13
Raymond Chen
If you hang out with designers, you may hear the word family used as a verb, usually with the adverb well. The old icons now look dated and do not family well with the Web site. We renamed the feature from Auto Shape to Instant Shape so that it families well with other features like Instant Color. The authenticity certificate on the side ...

Microspeak: booked

May 14, 2013 May 14, 2013 05/14/13
Raymond Chen
Remember, the term Microspeak is not tightly scoped to mean jargon used only at Microsoft. It's jargon used at Microsoft more often than in general usage. Today, it's a term that you really need to master if you want to talk with others about project planning. To book a feature is to commit to implementing the feature, including assigning ...

Microspeak: Tenet

April 23, 2013 Apr 23, 2013 04/23/13
Raymond Chen
In standard English, a tenet is a fundamental belief held by a group of people. At Microsoft, the term tenet is used as a generalization of what we previously called taxes: Things that everybody has to do in order to be a good software citizen. While taxes are typically very low-level and specific, like supporting roaming user profiles or...

Microspeak: bubble up

February 19, 2013 Feb 19, 2013 02/19/13
Raymond Chen
Bubble up is the name of a soft drink, but at Microsoft, it means something else. (Remember, Microspeak is not just terms used exclusively within Microsoft, but also terms used at Microsoft more often than in the general population.) To bubble up information is to expose the information at a higher reporting level. For example, you might ...

Microspeak: pivot

January 22, 2013 Jan 22, 2013 01/22/13
Raymond Chen
A great word to use at Microsoft to make it sound like you're one of the cool insiders is pivot. Mostly because the meaning of the word varies from place to place, so you can use it to mean whatever you like while still sounding hip and jargony. In Windows Phone, the term pivot is a technical term which refers to a type of control that lets...

Microspeak: touch base

November 20, 2012 Nov 20, 2012 11/20/12
Raymond Chen
The verb phrase touch base is in general business jargon use, but it's quite popular at Microsoft. To touch base with someone is to contact someone in a lightweight and mostly-informal sort of way. In other words, it takes the form of a piece of email or a brief office visit rather than a formal meeting with an agenda. Bob, can you touch ...

Microspeak: Granular

October 2, 2012 Oct 2, 2012 10/2/12
Raymond Chen
Today's Microspeak word is granular. Here are some citations. Please bring your cost estimates at the granularity of 3, 5 or 10 days. The archive function archives all data older than the date specified. Is there a way to get the archive to be more granular than just a date? Our database covers multiple accounts, and we'd like to choose a ...