It has been widely acknowledged that the field of computing is a hotbed of language abuse. But I continue to marvel at this paradox: my colleagues are accustomed to expressing themselves quite precisely in formal languages that are interpreted by unforgiving machines, and yet they carelessly disregard the subtleties of natural language. Recently, upon receiving a note in which to appeared in place of too, I asked the author, who had previously exhibited signs of intelligence, whether he had a similar problem with its and it's. His reaction was a frown of puzzlement.

One error that I have observed in the workplace with alarming frequency is the use of multiple in place of several, i.e., as a quantifier meaning more than one, as opposed to its proper use as an adjective describing a single entity consisting of several components. (I am not claiming, of course, that multiple cannot properly modify a plural noun. But if we speak, for example, of a group of women who are experiencing multiple pregnancies, it is understood that the same is not true of any one woman in the group; her condition is merely a multiple pregnancy.)

This confusion is not confined to the computing industry. The Chronicle of Higher Education, for example, in its employment section, lists those advertisements that involve more than one opening under the heading Multiple Positions. Even the most established constructions are fair game. Thus, in For Survival's Sake Workbook, Alexandre Rogers asks the disturbing question, "How do I know if I have multiple personalities?" I am aware that this mistake is not a new one. The editors of Webster's 3rd (who were so diligent in reporting linguistic atrocities and so remiss in identifying them) were actually moved to include several as a synonym for multiple, citing several (?) examples of this misusage.

No one else, however, has embraced this barbarism as enthusiastically as have my colleagues, who have simply deleted several and many from their vocabularies. I frequently hear of multiple possible explanations of a phenomenon, or even that an event has occurred multiple times. Last year, the Association for Computing Machinery sponsored an International Workshop on Multiple Perspectives in Software Development, possibly the first symposium ever to be dedicated to the propagation of a single grammatical error. I quote from two articles selected at random from the proceedings:

• ``The design of complex artifacts typically involves multiple designers sharing parts of an evolving design, sharing multiple design notations and tools.''
  -- J.C. Grundy, J.G. Hosking, W.B. Mugridge, and R.W. Amor, Support for Constructing Environments with Multiple Views.

• ``... any project involving legacy systems, multiple organizations, multiple contracts and high volumes of variable quality documentation. In my experience, that means any large project.''
  --G. Mullery, Tool Support for Multiple Viewpoints.