Not just “virtually” but literally annoyed
What is up with all the use and overuse of the word “virtually” in advertisement? Am I the only one to be annoyed by that?
I can’t say when it started but it seems to have become the norm. I hear it all the time and I find it really annoying.
Sometimes it makes sense to me. Like in this ad for some cosmetic product which claims to “make all skin defects virtually vanish”. This seems like a proper use of the word. The defects don’t show anymore but they haven’t actually vanished.
Most of the time though it’s used in the less common way (although this may no longer be true I guess) of meaning “almost”. Like in the ad for this air purifier that “virtually eliminates all odors” or this software product which is “virtually bug free”.
I don’t know but that seems just wrong to me. But I suppose in a country where superlatives are the norm in advertisement only a minority of people will actually be annoyed. Well, I’m one of them.
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About
After several years focusing on strategic and policy issues related to open source and standards, including in the emerging markets, I am back to more technical work. I am involved in several software standards development efforts within IBM. I am also responsible for driving the coordination of IBM standards activities from a strategic and technical point of view.
I have been working on open standards for 15 years, both as a staff member of standards development organizations (SDO) such as W3C and as a representative for IBM. I have been involved in every aspect of the standards development process. This includes the technical, strategic, political, and legal aspects, both internal and external to an SDO and to a company like IBM. I was involved in the development of standards such as HTML and XML.
I have also been involved in open source projects, such as Xerces, the XML parser developed by the Apache Software Foundation for which I was one of the lead architects.
