Part of a tester’s workload is the proofreading of text, more or less. So, here are three pairs of terms that every web and application content writer must know when to use and when not to.

Signup vs sign up
Setup vs set up
Login vs log in

There are others, but in my experience these are the most commonly abused. So frequently, in fact, that I do a double-take when I see the correct term used! You will notice the left term is the noun, the right the verb. Wait, you knew that? I thought you might. Well, stop getting it wrong then.

Introducing BBC Null. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this new station? Just me then.

Latest meme going round. I’m not sure what the point is other than to make your Facebook Status Updates feed look completely random…

Grab the nearest book.
Open it to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Just as happened here, there is no page 56 in my book. Well, there is but it’s completely blank. So I’ll use page 57*, where there are five headings which will have to suffice as sentences.

Anyway, this is mine:

In case you’ve been under a rock, the rate of VAT in the UK changed today from 17.5% to 15%. It will remain in place for 13 months, until the 1st January 2010.

In an odd coincidence, the 17.5% rate has been in place for 17.5 years. However it’s left as an excercise for the reader (to say nothing of the developer and the tester) to wonder how many modules, applications, web sites, point-of-sales code, and other items of software in Britain have this value hard-coded?

Although the Chancellor only gave one week’s notice of the change, this would not have posed a problem to those savvy enough to have written software that determined the rate of VAT from a config file, global variable, or some other kind of lookup. Easy-peasy fix. Minutes.

For those who hard-coded it however, there’s going to be a lot of cleaning up to do. Of course, that doesn’t just apply to code. What of static text and images on web sites? Banners that mention the end-user price? Have fun!

Take the opportunity not just to do a quick search-and-replace fix but to make VAT a variable because you’ll be doing this again in 13 months.

Anyway, that’s just the digital world. Now you realise why people put “+VAT” on signs and in catalogues. Future-proofed!

Bonus points for anyone who can find old prices still online (must be a live site: do not use this or this).

As a final note, beware of stating the saving the customer sees as 2.5% — the difference is actually 2.13%

Maybe this page didn’t look so bad in 2004, but it certainly does now. I’m sure buried under all the syndicated ads there’s actually a half-decent article trying to get out, but all you get is this:

As software spreads from computers into auto engines, factory robots, hospital X-ray machines and elsewhere, defects are no longer a problem to be managed. They must be predicted and excised or else unanticipated uses will lead to unintended consequ

Well there’s nothing like leading by example!

FogBugz is an amazing piece of sofware. Joel Spolsky‘s company appear to have come up with the impossible: software that not only helps you to keep track of your software projects, but is also functionally beautiful and beautifully functional.

That’s something pretty rare in software. One of my mantras when testing is…

First, make it work. Then worry about making it pretty.

(The latter hardly ever happens of course.) FogBugz embodies both, and others agree. Now I’m waiting for a 45-day project to come up so I can try it out, for free, in anger.

Or, a lesson in overkill.

I’m sitting the ISEB Foundation Certificate in Software Testing exam in November. Now, there’s quite a lot of controversy in the testing community about whether such things are worthwhile, what do they really test, does it devalue or enhance the field of Software Testing, etc.

I have read and agree with some of the more prominent bloggers who like to shout down certification in general. So why sit the exam? For one, I’ll be better placed to comment on the exam and course, having actually experienced it and sat it, rather than booing from the sidelines. Most of all though, and why I suspect a great many people decide to sit this themselves, it’s to enhance my CV.

It’s all very well putting an argument together about why test certification is or isn’t this or that, but think about this very real scenario: an employer advertises the position of Software Tester and mentions ISEB/ISTQB or equivalent body certification as a requirement for applying. Sure, you could get an interview without the “right” qualification, if your career experience is good enough, say, but is a prospective employer really going to want to hear your ten reasons why you didn’t think the exam proves anything? Some will, perhaps, but most won’t. They will simply wonder why you’re not up to it.

I was inspired to start this blog partly by James Bach’s provocation that “we need better testing bloggers“. Well I hope I can live up to that. Please tell me if I don’t.

On a side note I was quite impressed with just how quickly you can be up and running with a new blogging account. In fact I’ve spent longer editing these few lines than setting up the account…