[9YearLurker]

Perhaps nonsense up with which Microsoft would not put?

[Revolting cat!]

Well, Microsoft wanted to impact you proactively, otherwise, the company could care less!

[Nowhere Man]

I saw nothing wrong with the grammar but then again, I’m a Pittsburgher. B-D

[Lancey Howard]

(shrug) for several years here in Pennsylvania we had automobile license plates that proudly proclaimed, “You’ve Got a Friend In Pennsylvania”.

[Revolting cat!]

Indgrish!

[yeetch!]

A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with!!

[Calvin Locke]

Not that I'm a big fan of MS, but did you consider the audience for the message?

Perhaps they did.

(I still remember the "IN" in "FLAMMABLE" before it had to be dumbed down.)

[Cruising Speed]

Because “turn” and “off” have to be together. “Turn your computer off” is incorrect. “Turn off your computer” is correct. Learn English.

[Revolting cat!]

I use Microsoft’s (Win 7) own password protected screen saver. When I return and press the ANY key or the mouse, I first see the message “Locking your computer” for 5 seconds before the password prompt appears.

[JRandomFreeper]

the Unix platforms have never been noted for the precision of their error and informational messages

I just checked this variant of linux.

Yep. "Printer on fire" is still a valid error message for an unknown printer error.

/johnny

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I understand your point about grammar, but on another note I learned through bitter experience that if you do turn off your computer when you get that message, it’s format the hard drive and reinstall windows from scratch time.

[stormhill]

Having learned ESL I try to never pass up an opportunity to sharpen my grammar.

Could you explain what's wrong with the MS phrase?

[Cicero]

I think one can argue that “turn on” and “turn off” are familiar phrases, used of radios, TVs, computers, and most other electronic gadgets. Or, for that matter, before radios came on the scene, there was the phrase, “Turn off the lights.”

So, “Do not turn off your computer” seems correct to me.

[plain talk]

Grammar nazi’s sucketh

[Revolting cat!]

We have really devolved. In VMS (later OpenVMS, which change didn’t help much) messages have the following format:

%facility-s-identification, text

Example:

-RMS-E-FNF, file not found
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHFILE, no such file

Facility is an OS component, in this case the file system.

s is severity, in this case Warning.

identification is the message id.

You can capture (trap) the $STATUS in your script as a unique hex number and process it accordingly without failing the script. You can also get further help on the message.

All this was possible in the early 1980s.

More detail here: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/documentation/pdf/ovms_73_sys_mes.pdf

[steve86]

"Do not turn off your computer."

"< *do >" "do" < * > < SVO > < SVOO > < SV > V IMP VFIN @+FAUXV

"" "not" NEG-PART @NEG

"< turn >" "turn" < SVOC/A > < SVC/A > < out/SVC/N >

< out/SVC/A > < SVO > < SV > V INF @-FMAINV

"< off >" "off" ADV ADVL @ADVL

"off" PREP @ADVL

"< your >" "you" PRON PERS GEN SG2/PL2 @GN>

"< computer >" "computer" < DER:er > N NOM SG @

"<$.>"

[TBP]

No, “do not turn off your computer” is correct.

[Michael Barnes]

Larry Ellison appreciates you using Solaris. ;)

I'm the same, Solaris and linux. Don't mess with Windows much anymore outside my son's lappys with Win7 and what work requires (which is server side only).

Pingin' another techie..

[Revolting cat!]

So, the consensus appears to be that when you yell at your kids: “TURN IT OFF!”, you are abusing Queens English, because the correct yell is: “TURN OFF IT!” ?

[The Cajun]

Semi-computer geek, don’t think I’m going to bookmark this one :)