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On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 23:27, mjinks@xxxxxxxx.xxx wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 11:10:26PM +0200, Abigail wrote:
> >
> > Take for instance the registration form for YAPC::NA. It assumes
> > everyone has a first and a last name, and just can't deal with the
> > fact not everyone has one.
>
> This sort of thinking far predates web forms. Once upon a time there
> was a woman with no last name who had a daughter, and was compelled to
> fill out a form with both a first and last name, and this is why I now
> have a friend whose legal name is "Nancy Blank".
I have found this particularly prevalent with name prefixes or titles or
whatever you might want to call them - most software that requires a
name will also require an input ('Mr', 'Mme', 'Herr' or whatever) in the
title field but there seem to be a reasonably large number of people who
reject the use of such titles and get quite exercised if they receive a
communication of some sort with one on. A number of years ago I had to
adapt a document produced by a housing software when a tenant objected
strenuously to being styled with a '.' as a title.
Of course this situation is often compounded when you can only choose
from a drop down or similar.
There's stuff above here
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