I recently went to the movie Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, starring an incredible new young actor named Thomas Horn, along with Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock. There is a scene in the movie when Oskar (Horn) and his dad (Hanks) are having an oxymoron war, saying things like “deafening silence” and “clearly confused” and “seriously funny,” and—one of my favorites—“jumbo shrimp.”

This scene actually reminded me of an oxymoron I’ve heard used in our ProFicient SPC Fundamentals training class: “generically specific.” Students used it in reference to naming conventions within the software.

Here is the situation: I am creating a new data entry configuration (DEC) for collecting dimensional data. The parts I’m currently working with require inside diameter (ID) and outside diameter (OD) measurements. So I should call this DEC “diameters,” right? What if I had other parts that required ID, OD, and overall length (OAL), and I used the same equipment to measure those parts? In that case, I wouldn’t want to name the DEC  “diameters” because it’s a little too generic.

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