sign-in vs. sign-on
entropic
has two buttons: Register and Sign-on. The second one confuses me
every time I go there, because both options have the same meaning to
me. I thought that the proper form to access an existing accont
should be ' Sign in'--am I right? Is the hyphen necessary?
z.entropic
meirm...@erols.com
subP...@excite.com (entropic) posted:
If you're appearing on "I've got a Secret", the thing to do is to sign
in.
"Sign on" refers to getting on the network, like any other terminal
user. It's like logging on. Signing in and logging in are like
signing the book that office buildings have long had for after-hours
visitors; it's like registering one's presence. It's a matter of
perspective and a close choice anyhow whether to use sign in or sign
on, but when the other choice is register (for the first time?), I can
see why they don't want sign in, which means register (for any time).
The hyphen makes it a noun, and since register is a verb, it's not
parallel.
>z.entropic
Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 17 years
Mark Wallace
"entropic" <subP...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:fcb9e60c.01112...@posting.google.com...
I'd equate 'sign up' with 'register'. I don't see that there's an
awful lot of difference in "sign on"/"sign in"; nor in "log on"/"log
in", these days; although it's not that long ago the 'sign on', as
you say, was synonymous with 'register'. Times change.
--
Mark Wallace
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Little girl lost?
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George Hardy
> "Sign on" refers to getting on the network, like any other terminal
> user. It's like logging on.
Not necessarily. Long before a "network" a person would "sign on"
as a sailor on a ship.
GFH
Roberta Davies
My vote goes wholeheartedly for "sign in".
In the UK, "signing on" is what an unemployed person (or "jobseeker", in
officialese) does at the Jobcentre to get unemployment benefit (I can't
recall what the official term is for that).
Robbie