As soon as I wrote the OP I realized that folks would jump on and say “yeah, you can omit the www from any browsers these daze…”
I know you can. And in my own usage, I generally do omit it (and folks will still say back to me sometimes, “what? no double-you-double-you-double-you at the front end?”).
However, despite the breezy way the notion of cropping the tri-dub is thrown around here, it is still encountered in common usage a lot. To wit, radio and TV commercials. This is what actually got me thinking about it, having to sit through another home grown TV ad for **www.bufords_house_of_liver.com ** where they painfully spell out the double-you-double-you-double-you about 5 times in a 30 second spot, and I thought DAMN, this would perhaps be slightly less annoying if they could just shorten… etc. etc.
Anyway I just felt like pointing out that I’m not so much of a :wally that I didn’t know the browser omission trick.
I just realized another place I encounter this a lot which was nagging at me. I work for Big Chemical, and we have a burgeoning corporate intranet. Site addresses on this intraweb tend to use www or wwwx (where x is an integer) quite frequently, if not exclusively, and sometimes ya gotta say the www just so you can say the x as well.
And Ringo, the intent of the OP was to discuss those sites that still do tri-dub, as opposed to the many that don’t (and sensibly so)…I remember when the web was young I used to ponder the value of a prefix that appeared on EVERYTHING (i.e. if it’s everyplace, isn’t that semantically equivalent to not using it at all?) I’m sure there is a good historical NCSA cyber-geekoid reason why it was originally like that, but I don’t know what it is.
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy had roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this little piggy cried www.allthewayhome!
My friends and I really wanted “Wee wee wee!” (only said in a high squeaky voice) to catch on. We were, alas, and obviously, disappointed.
Once when my ex-wife and I were visiting her folks in Wales, we were on a bus that had the same advertisement in Welsh and English. The advert concerned a meter reader and a friendly old lady who plied him with cups of tea (not sure what the symbolism was there).
Anyway, the meter reader eventually had had enough tea and asked (English text) “Ooooh, where’s the loo Mrs. Jones?” But in the Welsh text (now I’m getting to the point) “Ooooh” was translated as “www”. It’s the same sound in Welsh, you see.
MrWhatsit always says “world wide web”, and I’ve fallen into the habit myself. As in, “world wide web dot google dot com” or whatever. I like it. Short (three syllables) and snappy.
Sometimes I’ll say “wuh wuh wuh dot …” but that’s mainly because I’m lazy.
What I’ve always wondered is why people always pronounce com, net, and gov, but spell out edu (and sometimes org). Of course, I also pronounce .co.uk like “dot coh dot uck.”
I remember David Letterman making jokes about the sudden gush of webpages way back in '93. He would say, “You can find them on the Internet…at Dubbya Dubbya Dubbya…Dubbya Dubbya…Dubbya Dubbya Ladies and Gentlemen Bruce WIllis will be joining us tonight…” I’ve been using Dubbya Dubbya Dubbya ever since. It’s not a sleek word, but it beats “double-u double-u double-u” and is kinda funny. It reminds me of buck teeth and presidents.
Often people just say “double-you double-you something dot com” - most people know that there’s 3 w’s plus a dot, and if they don’t they’re so stupid they shouldn’t be allowed online frankly.
Yeah, remember a few years ago when the web was a new thing and companies first started advertising their sites at the ends of commercials? They would read out the entire site! All http://www.whatever.com
I’m going to apply for an alias because I dread whenever anyone asks for our web site. "Dub dub dub…um, dubya dubya…H T T P colon the slash-with-the-top-pointing-to-the-right, another one, double u double u double u dash…yes, dash, r c i dot rutgers dot edu…edu…for education…slash tilde…that symbol next to the 1 that looks like a wiggle…yes, that’s the one…yes it’s used in Spanish…okay tilde insects…insects, with an s… i n s e c t s.
Thank God I don’t have to give the actual path name where the files reside. "The slash pointing to the right pandemonium…p a n d e m o n i u m…
Rush Limbaugh has allways said “triple dub” when pointing people to his website. I once heard him say how he got emails from people say his website wasn’t working. They were typing in “triple dub” not “www”. :rolleyes:
Also, I’m a newbie. But I would guess most people on this forum dont listen to Rush much. lol
