For the past two days, I've been in meetings with a group of us helping to map out a new Web site with a rep from the tech company that is going to do the work. I heard the word "granular" used in a way that was not familiar to me. In the context of Web 2.0--the latest interactive bells and whistles on the 'net--our new web site can be personalized "even down to the granular level" because each user will be able to customize what he/she sees by subscribing to RSS feeds.

I just always thought of granular as meaning "consisting of small grains," so having to do with texture. I guess now it means "of the lowest, smallest component?"

These same web folks like to "drill down" in the data a lot to see where that takes us, but that is another thread.

Wordmatic

FWIW, Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the different uses of granular.

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"even down to the granular level"

That usage doesn't sound quite right. Usually I've heard "granularity" as a synonym for "level of detail." For example, you can manage your documents by chapter, or by paragraph, but it's not practical to do it by word and certainly not by letter. (If you take it to a logical extreme, you could build a database with 26 objects - the letters of the alphabet - and then build everything else as queries or formulas based on those 26 letters.) In this context, though, it's only a relative term, and "down to the granular level" doesn't really make sense.

I know, I know...language evolves. But sometimes that evolution can be downright annoying! I mean, a list of nations in the UN is considered "fine granularity?" To me, its just a list of the nations in the UN!

Also, does it seem to you that those in computer science get a charge out of redefining every single word we have (I am embellishing, I know!) to develop their own vocabulary?

a list of nations in the UN is considered "fine granularity?"

I thought nations in the UN was course granularity, and the regions and cities therein were getting finer ...

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Also, does it seem to you that those in computer science get a charge out of redefining every single word we have (I am embellishing, I know!) to develop their own vocabulary?

It's been apparent to me for several years that my son the computer programmer and his brother the engineer were speaking another language entirely. When Jim comes back from his C++ standards meetings and wants to tell us about some great humorous thing that was said during a session, he first has to explain the vocabulary and then the importance of the expression they were debating and then finally we can all chuckle over the great remark made by one of the contributors. I've never even taken C++ for Dummies, so it's all a mystery.

Wordmatic

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Originally posted by Wally:

quote:

"even down to the granular level"

That usage doesn't sound quite right. Usually I've heard "granularity" as a synonym for "level of detail." For example, you can manage your documents by chapter, or by paragraph, but it's not practical to do it by word and certainly not by letter...In this context, though, it's only a relative term, and "down to the granular level" doesn't really make sense.

Our new web site will be drawing information from several databases in order to display information on its pages, especially for things like directories and course listings, so perhaps the rep was referring to the granularity of those listings--how much detail we wanted to see displayed, how much each user would get to choose to display, etc. I may have misunderstood what they were saying, and she may have misused the term, not really being a computer person herself, but just the person gathering info for the computer people and the designers.

I was just so surprised to hear the word used that way that I lost track of the conversation for a minute! I wanted to raise my hand and ask about the word and tell them I was going to post a query on Wordcraft, but, well, I didn't think anybody would appreciate that!

Wordmatic

I think it's also one of those technical terms that has made its way into colloquial usage. For example, I had a boss who would ask me, not, "Are you too busy to do this task?" but "Do you have the bandwidth to do this?"

Hmmm, if my boss asked me that, I'd say, "Well, after all, I am dieting!"