From: Mike Harrold <mharrold@cas.org>
Message-Id: <200102012312.SAA18389@mah21awu.cas.org>
Subject: Re: spelling of disc (disk) in /devfs
To: Wayne.Brown@altec.com
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 18:12:17 -0500 (EST)
Cc: fd0man@crosswinds.net (Michael B. Trausch),
        jmd@foozle.turbogeek.org (Jeremy M. Dolan),
        alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk (Alan Chandler),
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <862569E6.007EDB83.00@smtpnotes.altec.com> from "Wayne.Brown@altec.com" at Feb 01, 2001 05:04:56 PM
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> 
> 
> 
> To confuse things even more, I have a "Hewlett-Packard 9114 Disc Drive," which
> is really a 720K 3.5-inch diskette drive.
> 
> Wayne

My understanding (going back to the 80s) is that the correct term is
disc. "disk" is short for diskette. (discette would be pronounced as
"dissect" (think miscellaneous), so "diskette" was used instead.

So, when referring to a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy, "disk" would be correct
since they are diskettes. However, a "hard drive" is very much a disc
(or nowadays a group of discs). A "hard disc" would refer to one of
the constituents of a "hard drive".

Regards,

/Mike

> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Michael B. Trausch" <fd0man@crosswinds.net> on 01/31/2001 05:00:34 PM
> 
> To:   "Jeremy M. Dolan" <jmd@foozle.turbogeek.org>
> cc:   Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
>       (bcc: Wayne Brown/Corporate/Altec)
> 
> Subject:  Re: spelling of disc (disk) in /devfs
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Jeremy M. Dolan wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 01 Feb 2001 00:19:56 +0000, Alan Chandler wrote:
> > > The thing that struck me most was the spelling of disc with a 'c'.  As
> > > an Englishman this is the correct spelling for me most of the time,
> > > but I have come to accept "as a technical term" disk (as in American)
> > > is the right name for these devices.
> >
> > Disk is spelled 'disk' except for Compact Disc and Digital Versatile
> > Disc. If it wasn't 3:30 in the morning, a patch would be attached.
> >
> 
> Anymore, even I refer to everything as discs, I used to be hardcore in
> establishing the difference between disks, discs, and diskettes.  However,
> it's really useless, given that nobody even understands "diskette" in the
> general public when I say it, I wind up explaining it.
> 
>      - Mike
> 
> ===========================================================================
> Michael B. Trausch                                    fd0man@crosswinds.net
> Avid Linux User since April, '96!                           AIM:  ML100Smkr
> 
>               Contactable via IRC (DALNet) or AIM as ML100Smkr
> ===========================================================================
> 
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