Vent: Why does everyone keep calling a 'cursor' when they mean the whole mouse pointer?

I was helping my neighbor set up his new laptop last night and he kept saying his cursor was freezing, but it was the whole arrow icon that wasn't moving. Has anyone else noticed people mixing up the blinking line in text with the actual pointer on screen?

3 comments

3 Comments

bennett.harper11d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. You're telling me people are really calling the blinking text line a "cursor" and the arrow a "mouse pointer" like those are two different things? That's wild because I swear everyone I know just uses "cursor" for the arrow and "blinking line" for... well, the blinking line. I had no idea there was a whole debate about this. My brain is a little fried right now trying to wrap my head around the idea that the arrow isn't the cursor. I mean, what else would you even call it? The little hand? That's just ridiculous.

dixon.james11d ago

Wait, people actually call the arrow a cursor and NOT the blinking line? That's like calling a steering wheel a car. The whole point of a cursor is that it shows WHERE you are, and the blinking line does that for text. The arrow just tells you where you're ABOUT to click, not where your typing position is. Did someone actually try to argue that the arrow is the primary cursor and the text cursor is just some extra thing? That's wild to me.

the_brian8d ago

Right? Calling the arrow the cursor feels like calling the TV remote the television.