Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:40:43 +0000 From: Chris Rees <utisoft@googlemail.com> To: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> Cc: Bob Johnson <fbsdlists@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Disk vs Disc (was: WD External Disc Drive) Message-ID: <b79ecaef0910270140j52dfe1c9m8a04a201016135c4@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4AE6095F.4010904@infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <54db43990910261048k8a5d644q2950d4d5e5cb3b01@mail.gmail.com> <b79ecaef0910261159h2bb87bbx919b2a573595ad0e@mail.gmail.com> <4AE6095F.4010904@infracaninophile.co.uk>
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2009/10/26 Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>: > Chris Rees wrote: > >> I have always considered hard disk, floppy diskette, and compact disc >> (and digital versatile disc) to be the terminology; but then again the >> official British spelling is disc, whereas AFAICR the US spelling is >> disk. > > The official British spelling is whichever one of disc or disk takes your > fancy at the time. =A0Very few people actually care one way or the other. > On 26 Oct 2009 20:41, Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> wrot= e: > Chris Rees wrote: > > > > >> I have always considered hard disk, floppy diskette, and compact disc >> >> (and digital versatile disc) to be the terminology; but then again the >> >> official British spelling is disc, whereas AFAICR the US spelling is >> >> disk. > > > > > The official British spelling is whichever one of disc or disk takes your > > fancy at the time. Very few people actually care one way or the other. > > I was just reading what I saw in Wiktionary in the entry for disc: "disk mainly US, or for magnetic media" So disk refers to hard drive and floppy (magnetic), but vinyl (grooves) and CDs / DVDs (optical) are discs. >From the entry for Disk: In International English, disk is the correct spelling for magnetic disks. If the medium is optical, the variant disc is usually preferred, although computing is a peculiar field for the term. For instance hard disk and other disk drives are always thusly spelled, yet so are terms like compact discs. Thus, if referring to a physical drive or older media (3" or 5.25" diskettes) the k is used, but c is used for newer (optical based) media. Depends how authoritative you consider wiktionary, really. Chris --=20 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in a mailing list?
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