February 19th, 2007
Poll 2.0: Do you say 2, dot or point 0?
We've all heard of Web 2.0, Office 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Business 2.0 and all the other 2.0's. But what exactly do we hear when they're mentioned? Is that a dot or a point between the two figures? Or is the punctuation silent? Attending conferences in California last fall I was astonished to hear all three variations being cited from the speakers' podium, with no single variety winning a decisive plurality.
I was surprised because I'd always believed most American speakers prefer to say 'dot 0', whereas Brits prefer 'point 0', or else omit mentioning the dot or point (whatever it is) altogether. So I fully expected to hear everyone talking about [their chosen buzzword] '2 dot 0'. But it seems there's such a mix of English speakers in Silicon Valley these days — whether originally from Britain, the Indian subcontinent, the Pacific Rim or Europe, Middle East and Africa — that the American preference for 'dot 0' is becoming overwhelmed by offshore variants.
A couple of years ago, this wouldn't really have mattered, because virtually all communication on the Web used to be written as web pages, email or chat, rather than spoken aloud. But in the era of the podcast, the web conference and the on-demand video clip, it's no longer an academic question. I need to know which variant is least likely to alienate my listeners when I start talking about these 2.0 phenomena.
That's why I've decided to enlist the help of ZDNet's readers in this poll. What should we all be standardizing on? Dot 0, point 0 or silent? Is it 0 as in 'oh', 'zero' or 'nought'? Or have I got it all wrong and it should really be 'period oh', 'stop nought' or something else? You tell me. And if you can cite any authoritative references to back up your preference, post the details and a link in a Talkback comment.
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Phil Wainewright is a commentator and strategist on emerging software industry trends. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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