What’s the matter with friendly?

August 26th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood

The Associated Press Stylebook doesn’t like the term “user friendly.” It urges journalists to avoid it and rephrase, for example:

Instead of “The system is user friendly,” make it “The system is easy to use.”

I don’t agree with this. Webster’s finds “user-friendly” (yes, it hyphenates it) acceptable for meaning “easy to use, operate or understand: said especially of computer hardware programs, etc.”

It also says “-friendly” can be added to a word to mean “helpful to or safe for” as in “child-friendly” or “not harmful to” as in “environment-friendly.”

These all seem to be perfectly logical uses. I would much rather see a campaign to replace the term “friendly fire,” which is much too sanitized for what it means.

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